Plan your way to a less busy 2025

"Every minute you spend in planning saves 10 minutes in execution; this gives you a 1,000 percent return on energy." ~ Benjamin Disraeli.

Happy New Year 😄

Welcome to 2025! The reality is that this week in 2025 is hardly different to a fortnight ago in 2024… The days are getting a little bit shorter, but otherwise nothing has really changed.

Yet something has changed. We see a fresh new year, and therefore we allow ourselves a fresh start!

So let’s use this arbitrary change from 2024 to 2025 to improve ourselves and improve our businesses.

Being busy

One of the ways we can do that is by getting out of the busy cycle.

The standard answer to “How are you going?” is, “Busy.”

Our task lists are overflowing; we have 101 different ideas spinning around in our heads; and a dozen things we wished were done last Tuesday.

We feel overwhelmed by all the jobs coming up or left undone. We keep our heads down and push on, hoping that “one day” we’ll be able to come up for air.

We’ve all experienced this.

Sorry to tell you, but the reality is that we are never going to get to a point where there isn’t something else we could do!

But that doesn’t mean we have to feel overwhelmed.

It is possible to work less hours AND achieve more than you have before WHILE feeling in control and not overwhelmed.

One part of achieving this is to have a written down yearly plan that you can regularly and easily refer to.

How is that going to help you work less and achieve more while feeling in control?

Taking our weaner lambs away.

Well, here's a real life example from last week. I drove half an hour up to our second property to spray weeds. While there, I thought I would use my time effectively by also moving the mob of cattle. The only problem is, I had a brain explosion and forgot that we were preg testing cattle 3 days later. Instead of moving them into the smaller paddock near the yards, I moved them to our largest paddock that is filled with scrub… A mistake that cost 6 man hours to specially drive back up there and correct 🤦‍♂️.

Perhaps you've started lamb marking, only to discover that someone has forgotten to order the vaccine or clik.

All these silly little mistakes can add up to a lot of time wasted over a year.

Having a written down plan also helps us feel more in control by getting things out of our head.

Our brains, while incredible, can get bogged down if we are trying to think of too many things. This can result in less adept decision making.

By getting these tasks onto paper, you can spend less time worrying about whether you've remembered the next thing coming up. This will allow more space for creatively thinking about other ways to improve your business.

Annual Planner

To help you out, I have made available our annual planner! Since most sheep jobs are set around the joining date, I have set it up so that it automatically fills out many of the sheep jobs once you enter your joining date.

Our annual planner for sheep tasks.

To access, simply:

1. Download and save the file from here. (When you open it, you may need to click “Enable editing.”)

2. Enter the start date in the top Orange cell (I typically use the first Monday of the year).

3. Enter your joining date in the next Orange cell.

4. Add in your shearing and crutching dates, holidays, and any other major events that you like. To add these in, simply head to the week/s that these tasks will be completed, and enter the number of work-days that you will need over each week. It will automatically be shaded for you.

5. Update the “# work-days” column to reflect your expected work days for each task.

6. (Optionally) assign a person to each task so everyone knows who is responsible for each task.

The spreadsheet automatically adds up the number of work-days you need each week so you can see where you will be busiest, and where you can fit in other jobs or take time off!

You can adjust dates if the automatic dates don't work for you by deleting and adding the work-days eslehwere. However, the automatic formulas may no longer work properly in the row you change.

Print it out and stick it on the wall so that you always know what is coming up. Get in control of your time!

Hopefully this is helpful for you. If you have any questions, please reach out to us!

Best wishes
The team at Rissmerino.