TLDR: Put simply, The Creative’s Almanac is a 92-page guide for creating a vision for the upcoming year. I created it because I needed a better system for dreaming up a vision for the new year but still wanted it to feel creative and fun. You want it for its beautiful and minimalist design, helpful content, and because it’s simply the perfect companion for your creative business, my big dreamer friend!

For at least the past decade, I’ve done some kind of year-in-review marathon planning session in December — typically in that in-between time right after Christmas and just before the new year. I’d search Google and Etsy for creative planning worksheets and download the comprehensive and sometimes overly fluffy versions other people were producing.

I’d plan an entire day around this planning session — I’d set up candles and create a cozy space at home or plan to spend the day at a coffee shop (remember those days?!) and bring my journal, freshly printed worksheets, favorite pen, and dive on in.

I’d usually end up with a handful of New Year’s Resolutions for my personal life, which – in true human fashion – were abandoned by February. My planning didn’t really take into account how much I just loved the act of planning and how much I didn’t really love following through on those plans.

But I can’t really blame myself for not following through. My plans weren’t specific or measurable, they didn’t take into account how I like to hibernate in the early months of the year, and they weren’t connected to a larger vision for my life.

Eventually, I got fed up with this and knew I needed more of a system of accountability for planning, something that creates the larger life vision and distills it down to actionable bite sized steps. A decade ago there weren’t a ton of people in the creative world writing about how to make plans effectively (or if there were, I didn’t know they existed), but now everyone and their brother is writing about it. It’s like we’ve all woken up to just how important it is to be explicit and specific with ourselves when it comes to planning.

And leave it to me to not be satisfied with purchasing systems from other people. Nope, I needed to have my own version. So three years ago I made my first ever workbook and called it The New Year Workbook for Creatives in Business.

It served as a catalyst for planning out the year in an entirely new way. I could still have my cozy new year planning session, complete with dreaming about my life 5 or 10 years down the road, but the end goal was boiled down into actionable things I could do in the next three months to get closer to that vision.

I walked into the new year with a long-term vision for my life and a plan of attack for the short-term. I had a place to keep track of all the ideas that seem to float around in my head and a way to determine which idea was the most important for me to focus on right now.

This new iteration of a time-tested planning model comes to you with a new (and shorter) name and a new look from its former self, but with the same strategic and seasonal planning framework that provides a thirty-thousand-foot view of your life and business paired with focused plans for the next ninety days.

I give you: The Creative’s Almanac!

A few details about the workbook:

It’s beautiful on the inside. 92 pages of thoughtfully designed content for folks who are attracted to lovely things with a cool and cozy-almost-vintage feel.

The physical workbook is printed on thick 80# uncoated text paper, perfect for writing on.

The digital workbook is a fillable PDF so you can gather your notes right inside the file. It comes with a printer-friendly B&W version, too.

You can order one for yourself or a biz friend here.

Sending you love and hope for a brighter, ease-filled 2021.