Your Retreat: A Guide to Giving Yourself a Personal Planning Day

by Erin Odom

A few years ago, I started giving myself personal planning retreats. Yes, I said retreat! When I do not take this time alone to plan, my days, weeks, months and years tend to run ahead of me. I feel like I can never catch up to all I have on my plate. Carving out a specific time for both big picture vision casting and fine-detail goal setting and planning has made a world of difference. In this 64-page guidebook, you will -encouragement and motivation on how to create your own personal planning retreat. -examples of the tools needed to plan. -35 printables to guide you through your own retreat! ( These printables do not come inside the Kindle format. There is a link within the book that takes readers to where they can sign up to get the printables delivered straight to their inboxes.) Your Retreat is both practical and encouraging. It will help you stay organized, but it’s much more than that. It will encourage and empower you to dream. Putting your goals on paper can be the first step to achieving your dreams.

25 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Erin Odom is the author of More Than Just Making It and You Can Stay Home With Your Kids and is the founder of The Humbled Homemaker, a blog dedicated to grace-filled living designed to equip and encourage mothers in the trenches. She is passionate about Jesus, motherhood, crunchy living, and seeing women use their God-given gifts and passions to overcome life's challenges. Her Southern charm and wealth of inspirational, practical content has drawn an audience of millions over the years. Erin and her husband, Will, live in North Carolina, where they raise their three spirited redheaded girls and sweet and spoiled redheaded boy. Follow Erin at thehumbledhomemaker.com.

Reviews

[Maryalene · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book wasn't for me, but that doesn't mean it won't be useful to others.

As a short ebook, I felt as though almost as much time was devoted to why we should plan as to setting up a retreat. As for the actual planning, the author provides some nice printables. However, a large focus is on creating mission statements, something that has never proven useful to me in the past.

When it comes to goal setting, she suggests naming three broad goals and identifying specific actions to be taken later. So, for example, the goal might be meal planning and the action step (for later) is to draw up a list of favorite family meals. In my mind, on a planning retreat, you would actually want to draw up that list, not save it for later. The author does say that she created the ebook as a framework for her own planning retreats and obviously we all have different approaches. For me personally, I think her approach to planning would leave me feeling overwhelmed with a long list of to-dos. I would rather spend my retreat completing action items so I can walk away feeling like I was productive and crossed some to-dos off my list.

I'm not sure what I expected when I started this book, but unfortunately, it felt a bit too vague to be helpful to me. Again, that's likely just a reflection of different planning styles.

[Becky Simmons · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a guide to planning your year. I think some of the things she suggests should have more step by step instructions. It does free you from the guilt of pulling away to plan.

[Skylar · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really like the straightforward way of this guide, but I think it could offer more guidance. For instance, choosing one word as a theme for your year: it would have been helpful to have more than one example, and even that example didn't show how to implement it. The printables were useful and straightforward, and I liked that the author considered both list-makers and mind-mappers on at least some of them. Overall, I found there to be a lack of examples and how to implement those examples, but the ebook gives you a really good set-up, agenda, and perspective to use.

[Dawn Aldridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Erin encourages readers to create an overall mission statement as well as mission statements for each area of your life so you can weigh any decision against the metric of, "does this decision fit with my mission?"

After reading this book, I felt encouraged to make a monthly meal plan (which I have never done, or wanted to do before) to reduce the time it takes to figure out what will be for dinner.

This ebook includes lots of planning printables. Not all of them may apply to you, but you can print just the ones you need.

[Emily Seltzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative

This book is small (I read through it quickly... about 30 minutes) but it's packed full with a lot of information. It's one of those books that I will continue to re-read and reference as I precede to have my own personal planning retreat. I was also super excited to see that the author has a link to acquire the printable to aid me in my planning. Overall this ebook is very informative and I'd especially recommend it to other Christian homemakers.

[Kara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the direction that this quick read gives, but I would have enjoyed a few more examples. I'm excited to use the planning tools this weekend, they look very helpful. Love what a quick read it is, being a busy homemaker like her, quick and direct is just what I need to get motivated!

[Corey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the idea, but would have liked much more detail. Another reviewer mentioned the one word concept, and I agree. Maybe more info? Resources? As a full time working mom, I also would like to see more directed towards career goals,

[Denise Mims · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best retreat yet.....

I was delighted with all the information I received. I am working on my retreat to begin in three days. I can't wait to share it with my women's group.
Denise

[Mary Clayton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It was short, which was nice because Erin got right to the point. I was looking for help in setting goals for the new year. Your Retreat helped me set realistic goals with a set plan of how to accomplish them!

[Erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to Erin on the MOM Conference & bought this book for the printables. So excited to go on my personal planning retreat!

This book has lots of good info and great printables. Yay, yay, yay!!!

[Brianna Kidd · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a great little book on setting goals in your personal life. I especially enjoyed looking through all of the Printables and choosing some for my own planning retreat!