Oh hey there, off-season! Nice to see you again, amiright? 😉 For those of you with an off-season, right now you might be breathing deep, excited to relax, and take some time for yourself. This is the perfect time to take a step back, improve your workflows, tackle those bigger projects, and most importantly, take some time to refresh yourself. If you’re anything like me and every creative I’ve ever met, you probably have a looooooong list of projects you hope to complete this off season. One of the most important things you need to know heading into this season is that you might not be able to do it all and that’s okay. So before this sweet time melts away, go through these 8 steps to decide how to make the most of your off season.

Disclaimer: If you don’t have an off season, it’s even more important that you’re consistently reviewing your goals and making sure that you’re focused on the right things AND planning in time off. The strategies I share can be used to plan out your projects on a quarterly basis. Even if you don’t have an off season, you should make it a priority to work on at least one project every year that refreshes you. 

1. Brain dump all of the off season projects you want to complete.

Your project list is a mile long. There’s SO many things you’ve been wanting to accomplish. They come to you while you’re working with a client, when writing an email, in the shower, and in the middle of the night. It’s time to get all those ideas in ONE consistent place. Give yourself some dedicated time to dump all your potential projects and tasks into one place. This could be a list on your phone, a notebook, a Google doc, whatever works for you! 

I’m a firm believer in keeping this list somewhere you can access it at all times. That way, the next time you get an idea at the grocery store, you can add it to your list and free up the brain space. If you want to know my strategy for wrangling all my ideas in an easy to access list, check out my blog post about the 4 Lists You Need in your Creative Biz.

2. Decide how much you want to work during your off season.

It’s totally okay to work less in your off season. You earned it! But it’s super important to be intentional about working less and plan for it. Do you only want to work 3 days a week? Or maybe half days? Whatever your schedule is, figure out how many hours you’re going to work each week. This is ESSENTIAL to making the most of your off season and avoiding the guilt that can come with squandered time. 

3. Go through your brain dump and ask yourself WHY you want to do each thing.

Sometimes perceived rules and expectations can drive what we think we need to work on in our off season. For every project on your list, ask yourself these questions:

• Do you feel pressure to complete this project?
• Are you doing this project just because it’s what everyone else is doing?
• Is the project something you believe is going to move your business forward in the direction YOU want to go? If yes, how?
• Do you believe in the principle of this project? Is it important to you?

These questions will help you weigh the balance of perceived rules/expectations and what is actually best for you and your business. If you find projects on your list that you think might be because of perceived rules and expectations, dig into it. Talk to trusted people in your industry to see if the project is something you actually need to do or if you can officially take it off your list. There will always be projects we’re not super pumped about or that we don’t love doing, but are still important to move us forward in the goals we have. On the flip side, there are projects that we *think* we should prioritize, but don’t actually resonate with our values and won’t actually get us where we want to go. This all stems from knowing your goals and your definition of success.

4. Prioritize the list.

This is probably the hardest part of the whole process. There will be a lot of things on your list that feel equally important. To help with prioritization, make sure that you pick the projects that are going to allow you to be creative in your business during your busy season. I think there are two types of projects that fall into this category: process improvements and refreshing passion projects. 

What weighs you down or stresses you out that you never get to? That’s probably a process improvement project that you should prioritize. Some examples of process improvements could be updating email templates, backend website updates, or creating a one-page FAQ page for clients. Think about what makes your busy season stressful and what activities you find yourself doing over and over (like answering those same questions every client asks). What projects can you do now to help alleviate that stress during the busy season? One example might be a course or some sort of education that will grow you in an area that seems to stress you out because you lack the knowledge to do it as well as you’d like.

I also believe you should do at least one refreshing passion project that brings you joy and creativity. This might not be something you originally thought to include in your off season project brain dump, so here are some ideas:

• Get creative: craft, paint, draw, write, CREATE just for fun
• Read a book (related to your business or not)
• Work on a project that’s just for fun (like a styled shoot or branding shoot)
• Learn about something you’ve been interested in (again, this doesn’t have to be related to your business but it can!)

You get the idea. 😉 Make time for a project that refreshes you. A fresh you = a healthy business. For me, I’d choose something like sitting down for a day and reading a book from cover to cover. That’s not for everyone, but it sounds exciting and refreshing to me!

5. Break down the top priority projects into smaller tasks with time estimates of how long it will take to complete.

Take your big project and write out every single task you’ll need to complete to finish the project. Most people don’t break the tasks down far enough, so when you think you’ve broken it down as small as you can, try to break it down even more. For example, if one of your projects is to write blog posts, you might break it up into steps like:

• Decide topic for blog post: 15 minutes
• Research topic: 1 hour
• Outline blog post with main points: 30 minutes
• Write the content rough draft: 1.5 hours
• Edit final draft: 1 hour
• Pick images for post: 15 minutes
• Create graphics (this should be broken down even further to specifics like Pinterest, Instagram story, etc.): 45 minutes

The point is to break everything down as far as you possibly can to help estimate how much time it will take to complete. Be very specific and realistic with yourself about how much time each task will take. I recommend always estimating on the high end, because things always seem to take longer than we think they will.

Side note: Everyone and I mean EVERYONE says “but I have no idea how long this will take.” My answer? Just try. Start somewhere. Then, take note of how long it actually takes. I like to update my time blocks on my calendar so that I can look back and see trends of how long different types of work take me.

6. Build out your whole off season by week.

When you’re initially planning out your off season, keep it simple. There’s no need to plan out your whole off season hour by hour up front. You should do your time blocking on a weekly basis. The point here is to look at your whole off season and assign tasks per week so you have an idea of how many projects you can actually do, given the hours you want to work. To do this, use your task list and time estimates. Fit the tasks into each week, keeping in mind how many hours you plan to work. By using the time estimates, you will be able to figure out exactly what can fit into your work hours. Make sure you’re taking into account other work that you’re committed to doing each week.

This may look like:

January 4-8 (15 hours)

• Update email templates (3 hours)
• Review workflows (3 hours)
• Order Client Gifts (1 hour)
• Organize Receipts (2 hours)
• Meeting with Tax Accountant (3 hours)
• 2021 Content Plan (3 hours)

7. When you realize you can’t do everything (because you will)… be realistic.

We all do it and we do it all the time… we bite off more than we can chew. We have countless projects we hope to complete, but don’t think through the time it will take and we just get stressed. It’s the reason we make big goals we can’t reach and then feel discouraged. It’s okay to realize you can’t do it all. It’s actually a really good thing! It means you’ve taken the time to be realistic and plan. It means you’re respecting your work/life balance and sticking to your working hours.

When you realize you can’t do everything, be super honest with yourself about what is really the most important next step for your business. Everything you choose to work on during your off season needs to be either moving you toward your next big goal or refreshing you. I can hear you already… you probably want to take out that project that’s on your list just for fun. You’re not allowed! You have to do at least one project this off season that will refresh you. That time is just as important for your business and capacity next season.

8. Do the work.

You’ve done all the planning and now you just have to do. the. work. Stick to your plan and when things inevitably come up (because things WILL come up) make sure you’re tweaking your plan as you go. To help you stay productive, follow my tried and true 6 steps to your most productive week! You got this, friend!