Hello and welcome to Best Laid Plans. This is your host, Sarah Hart Unger, and this is a podcast where we talk all things planning and planning adjacent. So today's topic is Q4 Energy and sticking to your plan.

So there's actually two different parts to this episode.

One of it is dedicated to quintile four, which we're going to talk all about.

And then the second half is inspired by a listener question that I just thought was good enough to dedicate an entire episode too.

So here we go. All right, so a review of the quintile

system that I like to use to divide up the year. My disclaimer is always that this may not be

your favorite system. You might like trimesters, you might like the traditional quarters,

or you may have an entirely self-defined system where you divide up the

year into six equal pieces or something like that. So whatever works for you. But I do enjoy quintiles

myself. Quintiles go from January 1st to spring break is quintile 1. It has all of that

January fresh start energy in it. Spring break to the end of the school year

is spring. It's quintile two. Usually, things can get a little busy in quintile two, but it's still

fun, packed with lots of stuff. Quintile three is summer. And at least in my current stage of

life, that feels a little bit more relaxed. There tends to be fewer

activities for the kids. There's more downtime. And I feel like work slows down just a little bit

as well. Quintile 4 is when school start up again. And I know not everybody listening has kids

in school. But I will say that even if you don't, there is definitely that sort of ramp up of society that

happens after summer where things just start feeling like they move a little bit faster again.

And so you would still feel that energy in the air in most places starting around September.

And then that goes all the way until November 1st, which I have defined as its own quintile

with December. So November 1st to the I have defined as its own quintile with December. So November

1st to the end of December is what I call reflection and celebration season. There's holidays.

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