Matthew Lang

A recent trend in my RSS feeds and newsletters is that March is a month for preparing and planning and is the start of a seasonal way of implementing those plans.

Seth Godin recently blogged about March being the strategy month.

But March? Around the world, March can be a chance to get down to the work we committed to do.

Invest 31 days into outlining, discussing and fleshing out the strategy you want to bring to your career or your project. It doesn’t matter how fast you’re going if you’re headed in the wrong direction.

Mike Vardy also wrote in his newsletter that if you feel left behind, don’t worry.

If you’ve been feeling behind, let me be clear: you’re not behind—you’re right on time. This is your moment to decide—what do you want this year to really be about?

Finally, Austin Kleon also discussed living seasonally in his newsletter. Now is the time to plant those ideas for the year ahead. Austin Kleon’s newsletter got me thinking about how March is the month for starting a new one—not with resolutions, but with plans.

New Year’s resolutions used to be a thing for me, but I never saw them through. I would get a few weeks in every year, and my resolutions would fall by the wayside. After a time, I gave up on the notion that January would be the start of something new.

The problem with resolutions is that they are decisions that are attempted at the change of a day, and they are made when most of us are getting over the last of the holidays. It can be challenging to make adjustments and see decisions through. You need more time to prepare and see those decisions through.

March is traditionally a time for planting in the garden. Just last weekend, we started planting our tomato and chilli seeds. Next weekend, we’ll look to start planting flowers and herbs. I also have some plans to put a permanent greenhouse in the garden instead of the plastic ones I have been using.

Next weekend, I will start building a base for the greenhouse to sit on, and hopefully, by April, I’ll have a more permanent place for growing through the summer.

While our plans for the garden will take time, they will yield results with time and care throughout the summer and into the autumn.

I’ve got other plans for this year outside of the garden. These plans will take time, but using the year’s seasons is a better way of planning for the year ahead. I will use the next few months to get some plans in place, both for in and outside the garden.

Dust rained in the halls of Mechanical; it shivered free from the violence of the digging. Wires overhead swung gently in their harnesses. Pipes rattled. And from the generator room, staccato bangs filled the air, bounced off the walls, and brought to mind a time when unbalanced machines spun dangerously.

‐ Dust by Hugh Howey

I’m loving this series of books.

Chris Done’s estimation method is brilliant because it allows for flexibility and grows with the complexity of what you are estimating.

I call it “less than estimation” because if a given piece of work is obviously under an hour, your estimate is <hour. If it’s not obvious, you bump it up to <day. If it doesn’t obviously fit within a day, bump it up to a <week. If you’re not sure it’ll fit into a week, my experience says that it could take even three weeks, so bump it up to <month.

— Less-Than Estimation

This should also work well with your preferred task manager if it allows you to use tags to add meta-data to tasks.