Quarterly Planning Basics 🍀

January 16, 2025

It's the middle of Week 3 of 2025, and although the year has already started, maybe we should still talk a bit about goal-setting (whether we call them New Year's resolutions or not).

Like most people, I tend to think about the upcoming year when December rolls around. This year though, instead of going for yearly goals, I decided to set my sight to the short-term — and that's where quarterly goals come into the picture.

Why Quarterly Beats Annual

Quarterly goals seem to have a few clear advantages over the annual ones:

• More modular planning. Shorter periods force you to be more realistic with what you commit to. Instead of setting a goal like "$10k/month by the end of the year", you can aim for something achievable in Q1 2025, and then build on it quarter by quarter.
• Shorter feedback loops. Three months from now you can look back at the past 90 days and see what went right and what went wrong — which will then inform your goal-setting for the next quarter. Annual goals only let you correct course once a year. Quarterly ones let you correct course four times as often.
• You can set seasons and themes. I recently came across the idea of colour-coding certain periods, giving them a quote to label them, etc. It may seem small, but it helps romanticise the process of doing your everyday habits.

That last point is the one I want to spend a little more time on.

Giving Your Quarter a Theme

The colour for my personal Q1 2025 is obsidian — going from dark to light, with the days growing longer and new opportunities coming up this season.

It sounds aesthetic, and that's kind of the point. Habits and goals are usually framed as cold, mechanical things: track the number, hit the target, repeat. But humans aren't great at sticking to cold and mechanical for 90 days straight. We respond to narrative.

Giving the quarter a name, a colour, even a quote, turns it into a chapter rather than a checklist. When the chapter ends, you close it cleanly — reflect, learn, then open a new one. Q2 might be "emerald", Q3 might be "amber". Each one with its own tone and its own focus.

A few prompts that have helped me set a theme:

• What does the weather and the daylight look like this quarter? (Q1 in the northern hemisphere is dark, cold, introspective — lean into it.)
• Which two or three areas of life do I want to push, and which can sit on maintenance mode?
• If I were to title this quarter in one word, what would it be?

A Mid-Quarter Check-in

We'll check in again somewhere near the end of March to see whether quarterly planning was actually beneficial in my endeavours. In the meantime, a few things from the past couple of weeks worth noting (weather in Sofia really went hard on the winter side, and I managed to start the cinematic year strong with a solid 1st movie for 2025 — Paddington in Peru, a 10/10 by concept alone 😄):

• A pivotal career move. I submitted my resignation letter at my corporate IT job and will be moving to full-time at a startup with quite a different pace and environment. Very excited about this change, and looking forward to actually having ownership over features and having much more impact with my work. ✨
• Sports take a winter hit. This past week caught me a bit unprepared, with the snowy weather making me reluctant to go for a run (because I didn't want to, you know, slip and fall on my head on the ice ❄️). Nevertheless, the gym remains a warm and cosy place — especially with the many people who joined as part of their New Year's resolutions.
• A surprise side gig. Randomly enough, I got contacted by a Bulgarian YouTuber/streamer with the request to 3D print some small charms as gifts to his fanbase. Fingers crossed that it may turn into a recurring gig. 🤞

None of these were on any "2025 vision board". They're the kind of things you can only react to with a flexible plan, and that's exactly the case for shorter planning horizons.

Book of the Quarter: Before the Coffee Gets Cold

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi is a short fiction novel with a simple premise — clients in this Japanese cafe have the chance to go back into the past for a short period of time (until their coffee gets cold, as the title suggests).

It's a sequence of four interconnected stories, and its core themes are the importance of gratitude, doing things on time, regret, and communication. As is typical for Japanese novels, the tone is a tad bittersweet and melancholic, and reminded me of another book by a Japanese author I read, Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami.

I managed to read this book on my flight back from Scotland, on the return from my graduation, and it was a really gripping read — with relatable characters you end up caring for, despite the book being under 200 pages long.

Overall, a solid 7/10 read. It has a couple of sequels, and I'm curious if you have read any of them.

There's something quietly fitting about reading a book about time-travel and regret right at the start of a new quarter. The whole framing of quarterly planning is essentially: do the thing now, while the coffee is still warm.

Worth Watching This Quarter

Two videos that pair nicely with this topic if you're in goal-setting mode:

How to Make 2025 the Best Year of Your Life by Captain Sinbad — practical reframes for the year ahead.

Why You Feel Lost in Your 20s by HealthyGamerGG — useful context if you find that the goals you think you should set don't actually feel like yours.

Closing Thoughts

If you've already broken every New Year's resolution you set, that's actually fine. Twelve-month plans were never the only option, and they're often not the best one.

Pick a 90-day window. Give it a name and a colour if you want to. Decide on two or three things you want to move forward. Then check back at the end of March and see what the data says.

If you have Q1 goals of your own, I'd love to hear about them. Till next quarter — stay safe, stay curious, and keep kicking. ✌️