Being clear about what needs to happen regularly in your business, reduces decision fatigue and frees up energy.

Having weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual checklists in your business is a simple way to not only cultivate consistency and momentum, but to bring mindfulness and awareness as to what is and isn’t happening in your business.

Your business will have a unique list depending on your vision, goals, priorities, team, and it’s legalities, for example accounting requirements differ from country to country and the legal business set up.  You get to choose what goes on your list, and you get to choose what to take off when it’s no longer serving you.

You can keep your checklists in your favourite digital format or on good old fashioned paper. 

I house mine in a simple spreadsheet. I can easily see which tasks I’ve completed this month and any tasks which are routinely being missed over a period of time.  You can document any item on your list which is a multi-step task or process elsewhere. I use Trello and Asana.

6 reasons why a monthly checklist will support you and your business for business growth.

1. Frees up brain space.

You don’t need to be mining your brain each month for what it is you need to do.  Goodbye decision fatigue. You just open your spreadsheet and work your way down the list.

2. Gives you more time and energy.

Decision fatigue drains your energy and wastes time, as does reinventing the wheel each month. Free up energy to do the fun, creative stuff by knowing that your repeatable tasks are documented. The stuff which makes you magnetic.  When you have more energy you work more efficiently so you save time.  Including energy and mindset shifting tools and tasks, as well as celebrations, is a smart way to make your checklist a pleasure to move through and bring the best possible vibe to your business and life.

3. Gives you a vehicle or container for new business habits or systems you decide you want to cultivate.

The entrepreneurial world is a feast of ideas, sharing and learning.  When we hear something new that we’d like to cultivate within our business operations, self-care, or mindset support, it’s all too easy to think, ‘yes, I want to start that’ (……. and then promptly forget about it until next time we hear it mentioned and think ‘Oh yes, I wanted to do that.’)  If you put it straight into your weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual checklist, it’s way more likely to actually happen.

4. You can see over time what is and isn’t happening.

When you look back over the previous months you can see if there are certain tasks which are repeatedly not happening.  You then get to decide whether these tasks are therefore superfluous to your business? If yes, scrap them.  Or whether them not being done is, or potentially is, harming your business growth.  You can then decide if you need a strategy to support you to get them done.  It might be a practical strategy such as outsourcing, scheduling, or investing in new software, training or support, or it might be a mindset or energy issue – bring your tools or hire some support. Either way, you’re smart enough and creative enough to overcome the challenge of getting a sticky monthly task completed each month.

5. It evolves over time as you and your business evolve and grow.

You get to choose what you put on your list and what you take off.  You might choose to have multiple lists, one for you personally, one for the business as a whole, one for each team member.  It’s not set in stone, it’s not there to give yourself something to beat yourself up over.   It’s there to bring you awareness about what’s going on in your business.

6. You get to tick things off!

Who doesn’t love the dopamine hit of ticking something off your list?  My weekly checklist leads me to my monthly checklist. There’s a task which says ‘check monthly checklist.’ My monthly checklist leads me to my quarterly checklist, so again more opportunities to both focus on the things which are currently important to me, but also I get that all-satisfying tick!

Do you have weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual task checklists for your business? If not, are you sold on the idea? For efficient business growth, we need to be clear about the truth of what is actually happening in our business, rather than what we think is happening in our business! The checklist is an easy way to make that happen. We can get a bird’s eye view of our business.

If you’d like help setting up your task lists we can do that together in a single session.  Click here to book, or get in touch for more information.