In this November 2021 "Plan With Me" video, Matt Ragland outlines his final 6‑to‑8‑week sprint before the holiday season, targeting two primary projects: (1) building a backlog of ten new YouTube videos to cover the high‑traffic mid‑December to mid‑January period, and (2) preparing the launch of a new cohort of his "Productivity Power‑Up" course. He explains why short, focused sprints (6‑8 weeks) are optimal for creators, describing how to break a large goal into weekly sub‑goals using his GAP method (Goal, Action steps, Protected time). Ragland emphasizes the importance of defining success metrics, estimating task duration accurately, and creating fast feedback loops to reduce anxiety and improve future planning. He encourages viewers to adopt weekly productivity habits, stack productive weeks into quarterly and yearly momentum, and to join his email list for course updates. Throughout, he mixes instructional guidance with personal anecdotes about planning overwhelm, offering practical tips for overcoming it.
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Happy November, everyone. We're hitting the holiday season in full effect and the year is almost over. So I'm going to spend this video showing you my November plan with me schedule and the projects that I'm focusing on to close the year strong so that I can start the new year with a lot of momentum. Hi everyone, my name is Matt and I make videos to help creators, makers, and entrepreneurs stay focused, productive, and do more of what they love. For the entire year, I focused on working to these 6 to 8 week cycles, which is enough time to get something really significant done, but not enough that I don't feel stressed out or burnt out. Since we're at the beginning of November, it's a perfect time to have a final 6-ish week sprint before the Christmas holidays hit and the new year. Now, I have a lot planned for that time at the end of the year, and it's often one of the most popular times for people to watch the channel, for people to join courses. New year, new me is a real thing. And that's what I'm going to be focusing my next 6-week sprint on. In the final 6-week sprint of the year, I'm focusing on 2 main projects. The first one is to build up a backlog of YouTube videos because from mid-December to mid-January, that really is the biggest 4 weeks for my channel and for my business. And so if the channel seems a little light on videos over the next few weeks, just know that I'm building up that queue to make sure that you have all the videos that you could possibly want to watch in that 2 to 4 week stretch of ending the year that we're in right now and getting ramped up for the new year ahead. A successful outcome of these two projects that I am preparing for is to have 10 new YouTube videos ready for that 4-week stretch and to get ready for a new launch of my cohort course, the Productivity Power-Up. It's important whenever you set up a new project or set a new goal that you define what success is for you. And for these 2 projects, the successful outcomes are to have 10 new YouTube videos and to prepare my cohort course, the Productivity Power-Up, for launch at the beginning of the new year. 50 people took the course this year, and I just loved the feedback. People saying this helped me clarify my goals. It helped me be more productive and focused. It relieved a lot of the anxiety and stress that I had about getting to work every day. Especially it helped people start new YouTube channels. It helped people start podcasts. It helped people start side hustles and new businesses. So if you're looking for a productivity system that can help you do all of those things, Make sure you check out the link in the description below to sign up for my email list and make sure that you know when the Productivity Power-Up is going to launch. As we're drawing near to the end of the year, getting ready for your annual planning, it can feel overwhelming. I talk about this every single year. So if you've been watching the channel for a little while, this isn't going to sound new to you. But every year people get a little overwhelmed with annual planning. I know I feel that way as well. What I think about more, and I'm going to do a video about this, is more about what are my themes? What are the ways that I want to live and work going into a new year? What I advocate for are these 6-week sprints, 12 weeks at the most, because this is where you can define a very specific outcome that allows you to work on something consistently, but also not feel like you're spending an entire year trying to reach a particular goal or complete a particular project. If you're not used to long-term project or goal planning, it can again feel really overwhelming. What I always recommend people do is actually just start with the timeline of a week. I want you to focus on having a really productive week, maybe your most productive week ever, because if you can have a productive week, then you could have 2 productive weeks. And really all I do in my planning process, especially for these 6 to 8 week sprints that I have, is I look at a goal that I have, say like to create 10 new YouTube videos. And I break that down to say, okay, what is a sub-goal that I need to have at the end of each week so that at the end of these 6 weeks, I've completed my goal, of having 10 new YouTube videos. If you find long-term project or goal planning overwhelming, or you find that you can't quite get the work done that you want in the time that you've given yourself to do it, I encourage you to take a step back and just focus on what we've talked about a lot in this channel recently, which is that GAP method. What is my goal for this week? What are the action steps associated with that goal? And then what is the time that I can protect? That's the P. What is the time that I can protect to do those action steps so that I can achieve my goal at the end of the week? Because if you can have a productive week, again, you can have 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. And so achieving your goals at the end of a 6-week sprint or a 12-week quarter or even a year is just a matter of stacking enough productive weeks together to lead to the inevitability of the achievement of your goal, to the summit of your success. Now, the fear that people often have with project planning or goal setting is picking the wrong subgoals or not estimating the right amount of time that you need to protect. This is the timeline of any project or goal. Maybe something that you think is only going to take a month ends up taking 2 months. And then the thing that you were going to do in the second month is now happening in the third month and so on and so forth. You feel like you're just pushing everything back and that feels really frustrating. That feels very stressful. It makes me really anxious just talking about it because I've experienced that myself. I want to help you set that anxiety aside. And the way that you can do that is through focusing on what do I want to do over the next 6 weeks, and really trying to be honest with yourself about what are the goals that I have? What are these 6 sub-goals that lead to the achievement of my ultimate goal at the end of these 6 weeks? Because the tighter that you can compress the timeline of the goal that you want to achieve, you can get a faster feedback loop with yourself of understanding like, oh, This thing that I thought was going to take 2 hours actually took 4 hours. Maybe that means that this project that I had that I only thought would take a month is actually going to take 6 weeks, or it might take 2 months. This is a perfect amount of time, this kind of 6 to 8 weeks at the end of the year, to practice having productive weeks and stacking them on top of each other, of understanding how long certain tasks and projects take you so that you can build real momentum and personal understanding of how long your work takes going into the new year. When I'm working with clients and students in the Productivity Power-Up, I'll often find that this is one of the biggest causes of frustration and anxiety, is a lack of understanding of how long a particular project or task is going to take. And so it's easy to feel that frustration, to feel like you're not good enough at it, to feel like you're not cut out for this type of work, you shouldn't have had this goal in the first place. And that is a tough way to start the year. So again, I want to remind you, I do have a Productive Week course that you can take. It will help you be more productive. And then keep in mind that at the beginning of the new year, we're starting a new cohort of the Productivity Power-Up. The lesson that I want you to take away from this as you start to plan November and as you start stacking those productive weeks on top of each other is the faster feedback loop that you give to yourself, the faster that you will build that experience and expertise for the type of work that you want to do. This is really important because as you build that expertise, as you build that experience, you will start to become better at estimating what type of tasks you actually need to do. You'll get better at understanding how long the different tasks and projects take so that when you go into the new year and you're like, okay, I'm ready to get some stuff done this year, ready for this to be my most productive week ever. I'm ready to start my side hustle. I'm ready to start this new habit. I'm ready to start writing again. All of these things are available to you. Because you have that creative confidence, because you have that understanding and that you can do these things that you set in front of yourself because you've been practicing. I'm going to have a productive day. I'm going to have a productive week. And when I start to stack those productive weeks on top of each other, then I have the confidence to stack 6 weeks to a sprint project, stack 12 weeks to a quarterly goal that I have. And once you stack enough of those productive weeks together, that really is how you have a productive year. November is the perfect time to start stacking those productive weeks into a successful 6-week sprint so that when you hit the beginning of the new year, you can look at what do I want to do at the beginning of a new year? What do I want to have done at the end of Q1? And when you understand and you have that confidence because you've already started practicing it at the beginning of November, I promise you that you can have the confidence and momentum you need to to make 2022 your most productive year ever. I hope everyone had a happy Halloween and has a great start to the holiday season. I will see you back for more videos in November, of course, but again, remember, I'm really queuing things up for a busy set of videos between the, the middle of December into the middle of January. So keep an eye out for everything. If you want to start practicing stacking those productive weeks, check out the link in the description below. And also get ready, get on the email list so that you can know when the Productivity Power-Up cohort course starts at the beginning of the new year. Thanks so much for watching this video. Have a happy November as you plan with me. Thank you for planning with me on this video, and I'll see you in the next one. Thanks so much. Bye.
