If you've ever sat down with a brand new planner full of hope and motivation only to feel like a failure by February, this episode is for you. Welcome to the Plan Like a Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Tanya Lawson. And today, we are talking about the thing no one really talks about. Most planning systems assume that you're healthy, well-rested, emotionally regulated, and operating at peak capacity every single day of the year. And if you're listening to this, especially as a creative, a solopreneur, or someone living with a chronic illness, you already know how unrealistic that is. Today, we're talking about designing a year that supports your energy, not just your goals. We're not talking about how to push harder. We're not talking about how to optimize every minute of your life, but instead, how to build plans and systems that actually work with your body and brain instead of constantly fighting them. We're going to be talking about what energy-based planning really means. How to create chronic illness-friendly systems. Because I'm a chronic illness girly. Why choosing fewer priorities is one of the most powerful decisions you can actually make. And the tools that I personally use to reduce mental load instead of adding to it. This is a permission-giving episode. So take a breath and let's start there. Let's start with an uncomfortable truth. Goals aren't the problem. The problem is that most goals are planned for a fantasy version of you. The version of you who never gets sick. Spoiler alert, I have a cold right now, so if my voice is lower than usual, that's why. The you that never has brain fog. The you that never needs a recovery day. The you that never hits a creative dry spill. The you that never has life blow things up unexpectedly. Most of our annual plans are built on our best case energy, our ideal weeks, and the assumption that you'll just catch up later. But energy doesn't work like that. Energy is not linear. And your capacity changes day to day, season to season, year to year. And when your plan ignores that reality, a few things happen. First of all, you fall behind. You get behind on everything that you were supposed to do for the week, and you've not built anything in to help make up that time. So what happens next is you start feeling guilty. You're supposed to be running your business. You're supposed to be growing your business. And you feel guilty because life got in the way, and you don't have the capacity to make that up. So you start to assume that the problem is you. You must be a failure. Everyone else out there is succeeding and you're not. So clearly, there is something morally corrupt about you that you can't stick to your own plans, and eventually your entire plan just gets abandoned. I'm gonna give you the hard, honest truth here. If your plan only works when you feel great, it's not a plan. It is a wish. Your plan, it can't be a wish because wishes don't hold up when real life shows up to punch you in the face. So let's talk about what energy-based planning actually means. At its core, energy-based planning is designing your goals, your systems, and your workflows around your current capacity, not just your ambition. It means planning for your average days, not your best ones, because those best ones are wonderful when they show up, but most days are just average. It means asking, what does consistency look like when my energy fluctuates? Because some days your energy is going to be a lot higher than others. It's about asking yourself, how do I keep momentum without burning myself out? Because hustle culture will burn you out faster than you can point. It is not realistic, it is not sustainable. So you need to ask yourself what systems still function when I'm operating at half capacity? Those are the systems you need to set in place. This is what energy-based planning is all about. And it's rooted in a few key principles. First of all, consistency. Consistency matters way more than intensity. Slow progress that you can actually maintain is going to be fast progress that just wipes you out. Once you're wiped out, you stop. But that slow progress can be maintained and it will win every time. The tortoise in the hair is a fable for a reason. It teaches that important lesson that slow progress is always going to winnow. Second, building in margin is not laziness. Rest, buffer time, and recovery aren't rewards that you get because you worked hard. Rest, buffer time, and recovery are things that you need every single day. They're part of your infrastructure. And third, sustainability is the goal here. If your success requires you to override your body indefinitely, that is not success. That's going to lead you to burnout. It's going to lead you to your inevitable destruction. Sustainability is especially important if you're building a business or a creative life you want to keep for years and not just survive for a season. Yeah, you can hustle for a season of your life, but you cannot hustle indefinitely. And if you want to build a business or a creative life that supports you, sustainability has to be part of that. So let's talk specifically about systems because motivation is not reliable, but systems are where your real support system will live. They show up even when your motivation is just not there. So maybe you're dealing with a chronic illness like me, maybe you're neurodivergent, you're dealing with burnout, or your energy just fluctuates. You already know this truth. Some days you only have about 30% capacity. Some weeks disappear entirely. Maybe your child came down with a flu, or maybe your parent fell and you had to go take care of them. Life does not pause while you recover. Life keeps going and your business has to keep running. So the question becomes: how do we build systems that don't collapse when we need to rest? Chronic illness-friendly systems share a few traits, and you do not have to have a chronic illness to need a system like this. These systems are asynchronous, they don't require you to show up at the same time every single day. These systems are repeatable. You don't have to reinvent the wheel every single time. And they're low decision. Fewer choices means less cognitive drain. Have you ever sat down to watch TV at night and you have hundreds of channels and nothing to watch? You just can't decide. Versus if you sit down and you have a choice between two different things, the two things it's so much easier to make a decision with because your brain doesn't have to think as hard. These kinds of systems are also flexible without completely falling apart. So that might look something like content systems that don't rely on daily creativity. Offers that sell on their own without you having to constantly promote them. Planning in energy tiers, high energy, medium energy, and low energy. Have different plans for those different days. On your high energy days, you might batch or build ahead. On your medium energy days, you might just be in maintenance mode. And on low energy days, the system will still run quietly in the background while you rest and recover. And I want to say this very clearly: rest is not something you earn after productivity. Rest is part of the system. Rest is part of what keeps you creative. So now let's talk about something that feels scary, but is incredibly free. Choosing fewer priorities. Most people don't need better time management. They need fewer active goals. When everything is important, nothing actually gets done. Especially when your energy is limited. So here's why fewer priorities work: there's less contact switching. If you have fewer priorities, you have less things to switch back and forth between, which means your brain can stay focused on what really is going to move the needle. Fewer priorities mean easier recovery after those low energy days. It also means faster compounding progress. I'm all about compounding progress over here. It's just like compound interest in your bank account. It builds on itself. And that is going to get your business moving in the right direction. Now, here's a framework that I love. I want you to have one primary focus per quarter. We're talking about your business here. If you have a couple of personal goals, that's great. That's fine. But one primary focus per quarter. Maybe it's a launch. Maybe it's rebuilding your website. Maybe it is working on your blog or starting that podcast. Only one primary focus. And then you're going to have one supporting system for that primary focus. Everything else is in maintenance mode or it's paused on purpose. This isn't about shrinking down your dreams, it's about giving them room to breathe, giving yourself the permission to work on the thing that matters most right now. You're allowed to go all in while putting in less brain power. You're allowed to move slower. You're allowed to build in seasons. Fewer priorities doesn't mean you care less. It means that you care enough to protect your energy. Now, when it comes to protecting my energy, there are a few tools that I use to really help. So we're going to talk about those tools. These are not hustle tools, these are my energy-saving assistants. Having these tools in place reduces friction, decision fatigue, and cognitive load. It helps your brain work better. So one tool that I am absolutely loving right now is a tool called Air Tickler. This is great for those days when I'm staring at a blank page and I don't even know where to start. It just feels impossible. Airtickler helps generate SEO-friendly articles so that you're not starting from zero. Now, this is not done-for you work. You still have to guide it, but it removes that how do I even begin exhaustion. And it's different than some other AI writers that I've used in the past. AirTickler goes in and looks at your current website. It writes in your own language. It even suggests ideas for you. And of course, you pick the ones that resonate with you. Another favorite tool that I use hand in hand with AirTickler is Answer Socrates. Answer Socrates pulls real questions that people are already asking online. And uh they gave me a discount code Tanya10 gets you 10% off over at Answer Socrates. So if you sign up for something other than the free plan. So I believe it's 10% off your first three months, Tanya 10. But by looking at the questions people are already asking, you're not guessing what you need to create. When your decision energy is low, you have clarity handed to you because it's done the work. It knows what questions your audience is asking. And then my other big tool that I've fallen in love with is Go High Level. Go High Level is my CRM, my course management platform, everything in one. I was using Teachable and Kit and several other platforms. And I was able to get rid of all of them and just switch everything over to this one platform. It's awesome. The theme here is simple. Your systems should carry weight with you, not sit on your shoulders and add more weight to you. So before we wrap up, I want to leave you with a few reflection questions. You don't need to answer them all today, but let them sit with you for a little while. I want you to ask yourself, when do I naturally have the most energy? What drains me the fastest? Which systems break down when I'm exhausted? And what would change if I planned for my average capacity instead of my very best day? Because designing an energy supportive year means building around patterns, not pressured. It means letting your plan flex instead of fail. And most importantly, it means trusting that you don't need to be fixed. Your plan does. Now, I want to leave you with this: you don't need more discipline, you don't need to push harder, you don't need to become someone else to be successful. You need a plan that respects your body and your brain. And if you want help building systems that support your fluctuating energy, create visibility without daily output, and allow your business to run even during those low energy sessions. That's exactly what I focus on with my one-on-one clients and inside my membership. And I'll make sure everything that I talked about today, all those systems I use, they're linked in the show notes. Because the goal isn't to do more this year. The goal is to build a life and a business that doesn't cost you your health to maintain. I'll see you in the next episode where we're going to talk about three planning systems that you need to add in to make sure your business runs smoothly all the time. And until next time, keep planning like a boss.