Give Me Balance Planner Sort your business and life in just 5 simple steps

At In Just 5. we hate complicated business

planning tools that don’t take your personal life into account and vice versa.

It’s easy to try and focus on things we think will make money, or get distracted by tedious tasks

we hate, but in the process we neglect important

parts of our life and us. We forget the fun! We

don’t focus on things at work we enjoy.

We need a simple tool to help us focus on the

right kind of activities. Activities that will give us a

business and life we love!

Forgive the food metaphor (we’re super obsessed with food) but we don’t just want the ice cream sundae. We want one with whipped

cream and a cherry on top.

Enter the Give Me Balance Planner. An easy way

to prioritise and balance all the different aspects

of your life, and focus on activities to improve

and grow your business and life.

While a good business coach can really help you

perfect your strategy, we like to start with this

Give Me Balance Planner and CREEM.

The Give Me

Balance Planner

helps you identify

and categorise

activities using

CREEM.

All the activities in

your business, life,

or even specific

projects can be

categorised using

CREEM.

”

“

CONNECT – activities where you engage with others or community

RELAX – looking after and rewarding yourself and own needs – self-care

EVOLVE – things that will improve or grow you, your business or life

ENERGISE – things you LOVE doing

MAINTAIN – things that HAVE to be done, but you’d like to delegate or get rid of.

5 Key Steps

To get the most out of the Give Me

Balance, you’ll follow 5 easy steps:

1. Brain dump – capture all of your

activities and initial thoughts in the

CREEM swirls

2. Refine it – review everything you

captured in the Brain Dump and refine it

in line with your overarching goal(s)

3. List it – transfer your refined list of

activities to the CREEM table

4. Plan it – prioritise all activities and

allocate timeframes

5. Do it! – implement action plan,

monitor and update

Sit down with a cuppa (dollop of cream optional) and let’s do this!

• Decide what type of you activities would like to capture and plan eg.

Personal life or work or both, a specific project, a quarterly business

plan.

• Take a look at the CREEM swirls on the next few pages.

• Decide if you want a page for each CREEM category to give you lots of

room or if you want to capture your thoughts all on one page – in this

case use the one-pager option.

• Print out your preferred CREEM swirls and start capturing the first thing

that comes to you head when it comes to activities for each category.

• They can be activities you’re already doing, or activities you may like to/should do. Don’t hold back or overthink it.

• Use the prompt words on the swirls and the SAMPLES at the end of

this document for inspiration.

1. Brain dump

I like to plan my personal and work activities

together. This encourages alignment

between these parts of my life. I capture

them on the same CREEM swirls – often

there is overlap.

You could do this or use separate swirls for

personal and work and then combine the

activities in your overall planner in Steps 2-5

but it’s completely up to you.

Remember to capture your activities using the CREEM categories:

CONNECT – activities where you engage with others or community

RELAX – looking after and rewarding yourself and own needs – self-care

EVOLVE – things that will improve or grow you, your business or life

ENERGISE – things you LOVE doing

MAINTAIN – things that HAVE to be done, but you’d like to delegate or get rid of.

1. Brain dump

“

”

1. Brain dump

CONNECT

Date / /

Work ☐

Personal ☐

Other

1. Brain dump

RELAX

Date / /

Work ☐

Personal ☐

Other

1. Brain dump

EVOLVE

Date / /

Work ☐

Personal ☐

Other

1. Brain dump –

ENERGISE

Date / /

Work ☐

Personal ☐

Other

3. Brain dump

MAINTAIN

Date / /

Work ☐

Personal ☐

Other

1. Brain dump – 1 page option

Date / /

Work ☐

Personal ☐

Other

2. Refine it

• Now you need to refine your activities so that you only concentrate on

the IMPORTANT ones.

• Review all of the activities you captured in Step 1 – the Brain Dump

and circle or highlight only the activities that will help you achieve

your overarching goal(s).

• To encourage balance in your life and/or business, make sure you

choose some activities from each category.

• In the next step you will be transferring these important activities to a

table but first, what about your overall goal?

• In the first step it was important to capture all your thoughts, but not all

of them are relevant or will help you achieve your overall goal(s).

• Goals are important as they keep you on track and focused.

• You should have personal and work goals, which should be aligned

with each other. SAMPLES can be found at the end of this document.

• Capture your goals on the next page before moving onto Step 3.

MY PERSONAL GOAL(S) TIMEFRAME DONE

• ☐

• ☐

• ☐

2. Refine it

My overarching goals which all my activities must be aligned to are:

MY WORK GOAL(S) TIMEFRAME DONE

• ☐

• ☐

• ☐

MY OTHER GOAL(S) TIMEFRAME DONE

• ☐

• ☐

• ☐

3. List it

• Now transfer the IMPORTANT items you circled or highlighted in the

CREEM swirls and transfer them to the following table.

• List the activity under the relevant category.

• REMEMBER to check that these activities must help you achieve or be

aligned with your overall goal(s).

• If you believe an activity is IMPORTANT but doesn’t contribute to your overall goal, then include it, but make a note to yourself that you need

to revisit it later – these are often MAINTAIN activities you may try to

delegate or get rid of if possible. Alternatively you may need to revisit

your overall goals.

connect relax evolve energise maintain

ACTIVITIES ACTIVITIES ACTIVITIES ACTIVITIES ACTIVITIES

• • • • •

• • • • •

• • • • •

• • • • •

• • • • •

• • • • •

• • • • •

• • • • •

• • • • •

• • • • •

3. List it Date / /

Work ☐

Personal ☐

Other

4. Plan it

• Now you have a refined list of activities across the different CREEM

categories, you need to prioritise them and allocate timeframes.

• Transfer the activities from Step 3 into the Action Plan on the next

page. You may need to print out extra copies of the following table to

capture your key activities.

• Choose whether you want one action plan for work and one for

personal or combined, and choose a time period for the action plan.

• You should also choose one activity from each of the CONNECT,

RELAX, EVOLVE and ENERGISE categories, that you would like to

focus on for this time period.

• Also identify one activity from the MAINTAIN list that you would like to

delegate or get rid of.

• Then specify how you will celebrate or reward yourself after completing

each of these focus activities.

• Make sure you give a priority number to each activity, add extra detail

where needed and specify a deadline or critical day of the week.

4. Plan it My Action Plan

My number 1

priority activity to

CONNECT during

this period is:

My number 1

priority activity to

RELAX during

this period is:

My number 1

priority activity to

EVOLVE during

this period is:

My number 1

priority activity to

ENERGISE

during this period

is:

My number 1

MAINTAIN activity

I will delegate or

get rid of (circle

1) is:

I will celebrate this

achievement by:

I will celebrate this

achievement by:

I will celebrate this

achievement by:

I will celebrate this

achievement by:

I will celebrate this

achievement by:

Circle time period for this plan below:

Date / / This week

Work ☐ This month

Personal ☐ This quarter

Other This year

I will do it by:

/ /

I will do it by:

/ /

I will do it by:

/ /

I will do it by:

/ /

I will do it by:

/ /

PRIORITY

#

ACTIVITY DETAIL/COMMENT DEADLINE DONE

• ☐

• ☐

• ☐

• ☐

• ☐

• ☐

• ☐

• ☐

• ☐

• ☐

• ☐

• ☐

• ☐

• ☐

• ☐

4. Plan it My Action Plan My other priority CONNECT, RELAX, EVOLVE, ENERGISE and MAINTAIN activities for this period are:

5. Do it!

• Don’t forget to track your action plan

and your progress.

• You can track it in hard copy using your

action plan from Step 4.

• You may like to use a daily to do list.

• Alternatively you may like to put

reminders in your calendar.

• Do whatever works for you.

• Don’t be afraid to revisit you goals and plans at any time. Think and dream big.

The sky’s the limit! but most of all…

Have fun!

Samples

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