Cyclical time: planning by season, not by quarter
Why I stopped running my year on the fiscal calendar, and what I use instead.
The fiscal year is a useful fiction. It's the story businesses tell themselves so they can compare each other in spreadsheets. It is not, and has never been, how a human being actually lives.
A few years ago I stopped planning my life around Q1–Q4. I replaced it with four seasons, each with its own question. The change was quiet, almost private, and it rearranged nearly every decision I've made since.
The four questions
Winter: What wants to compost? I stop starting things. I inventory what's still alive and what should have ended a year ago. Most of my hardest decisions get made in January, indoors, in the dark.
Spring: What's ready to move? I start one thing. Just one. The discipline is refusing the second thing even when the first is going well. Spring is for getting something into the world before my self-doubt arrives.
Summer: What deserves full attention? This is when I work hardest and rest deepest. The projects that have earned my care get it. The ones that haven't, don't. I stop being polite about my time.
Fall: What am I ready to tell the truth about? Fall is my editorial season. Retorna episodes get written. Proposals get sent. I look at the year clearly and say what I think happened.
Why this is a finance question too
You cannot run a creative business on a schedule that treats every week like every other week. Your energy is not linear. Your revenue is not linear. Pretending otherwise is how practices burn out two Augusts in.
When I build a financial model for a creative business, the first thing I ask is: what does your year actually look like? When do you make the work? When do you sell it? When do you recover? The spreadsheet shapes itself around the answer.
Seasons are not a vibe. They're a model.
What this has cost me
Some kinds of speed. Some conversations I was "supposed" to be part of. An occasional bout of envy when someone I admire ships three big things in a quarter.
But I've also stopped missing the year while living it. I notice what I'm doing and when. I finish things in the seasons they were ready. And the work, the actual work, is better for it.
It turns out return is a form of planning. I just had to find a calendar that let me.