A 13-module operator life dashboard. Year architecture, quarterly drills, monthly checkpoints, weekly cadences, daily habits, capacity and energy planners, decision log, annual review, operator principles, sabbatical planner, goal-to-habit bridge. Single HTML file. Runs offline. Owned forever.
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Personal-use template. This is a planning and reflection dashboard. It does not constitute professional, medical, psychological, financial, or legal advice. Use as a starting framework — adapt to your situation, consult licensed professionals where appropriate.
01Year Architecture
Set the year before the year sets you. Define the theme, the priorities, the boundaries, and the success markers — once, in writing — so every quarterly drill and monthly checkpoint runs against a fixed reference.
The year ahead — in one sentence
Theme word for the year (one word)
Three priorities for the year (in priority order — not co-equal)
Three things I'm explicitly NOT doing this year (the no-list matters more than the to-do list)
Year-end success markers (concrete, measurable — what proves the year worked)
If everything goes wrong, the minimum-viable year looks like
The minimum-viable year is the gift you give yourself before the year starts. It's the floor — the version of the year that's still good even if everything stretch fails. Knowing the floor in writing makes you steady when stretch goals slip.
02Quarterly Drills
Four templates — one per quarter. Run on the last Saturday of each quarter. ~90 minutes. The compounding return on a quarterly drill is enormous: a year reviewed four times beats a year reviewed once.
Q1 Drill — End of March
Three months in. The honeymoon's over. Real signal coming through.
What's working that I'll double on?
What's not working that I'll cut?
Q2 single most important thing
Q2 Drill — End of June
Half year. The tilt point. How does the year compare to plan?
Year-on-year vs plan: ahead / on / behind
Biggest unexpected lesson Q1–Q2
H2 reset / continue?
Q3 Drill — End of September
Three months left. Closing arc time. What deserves the final push?
What MUST land before Dec 31?
What gets cut to make room?
Energy reserves: full / depleting / empty
Q4 Drill — End of December
Year-end. The honest mirror. The setup for next year happens here.
Three biggest wins of the year
Three biggest lessons
Theme word for next year (first instinct)
03Monthly Checkpoints
Twelve monthly templates. Run on the last Friday of each month, 30 minutes. Goals / wins / lessons / next-month focus. The compounding effect: 12 checkpoints per year creates a written log future-you will thank current-you for.
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
04Weekly Cadence
Four touchpoints per week, 15 minutes each. Monday plan. Wednesday mid-week check. Friday digest. Sunday review. Done consistently, this is the discipline that distinguishes operators from people who just drift through Mondays.
Monday plan (10 min, before email)
Set the three things that matter this week. Before the inbox sets it for you.
The one thing that, if I do it this week, makes everything else easier
Two supporting priorities
Wednesday mid-week check (5 min)
Half-time. Are you on the field you said you'd be on?
On track / off track / abandoned?
If off, what's pulling? Adjust or accept?
Friday digest (15 min)
Five-line digest to yourself. What happened, what mattered, what didn't.
Top win this week
Top friction
Lesson
Cut from next week
Add to next week
Sunday review (15 min, before week starts)
Read Friday digest. Set Monday's three. Close calendar. Sleep on it.
Calendar review — anything to move?
Energy reserves entering Monday
Tomorrow's first action (specific, <30 min)
05Daily Habits
Three time blocks. Morning, deep-work, evening. Each one a small ritual. Streaks compound. Missing one day is fine. Missing two in a row is the slip — recover on day three.
Morning ritual (15 min)
Wake at consistent time
Hydrate
Movement (5 min)
Read yesterday's Friday digest if Mon
Write today's one priority
Deep work block (90 min)
Phone in another room
Tabs to a minimum
Single task
End with 1-line note: what got done
5-min walk before next block
Evening review (10 min)
Close laptop
1-line: did I do today's priority?
1-line: what's tomorrow's first action?
Lay out clothes / prep coffee
Phone out of bedroom
30-day habit tracker
Mark each day. Streak resets at zero on a miss. Track which habit broke first and why — that's the data.
Which habit slipped first this month, and why?
06Capacity Calculator
How many hours/week do you actually have available for the priorities? Most people overestimate by 10–20 hours. Get it on paper. The result is sobering and clarifying.
Inputs
Total committed
156 hrs
Available for priorities
12 hrs
Available per day average
1.7 hrs
If "available for priorities" is < 5 hrs/week, your year priorities are sitting in compressed time. Either redistribute commitments or right-size the priorities. Neither is failure — both beats the third option (overcommit then resent).
07Energy Allocation
Hours alone don't get the priorities done. Energy does. Map your high-energy windows to your highest-leverage tasks. Most people accidentally spend their best hours on the wrong things.
Map your energy
Highest-energy time of day (concrete window, e.g. 6–9am)
Lowest-energy time of day
Best day of the week for hard work
Worst day of the week for hard work
Match work to energy
Hard creative work — which window?
Meetings / calls — which window?
Email / admin — which window?
Recovery / unstructured — which window?
The single highest-leverage move most operators can make: protect the high-energy window from low-leverage work. Email at 8am steals from the year. Email at 4pm steals from nothing.
08Time-Block Templates
Four archetypes. Pick the one that fits your week — or hybridise. The point isn't following a template perfectly. The point is having a default so the calendar has shape before the world tries to shape it.
Maker schedule (engineers, writers, builders)
Mon–Fri: 6am–11am deep work block (5 hrs)
11am–12pm transition / inbox
12–1 lunch + walk
1–4 admin, meetings, secondary tasks
4–5 close-out + tomorrow's priority
Best for: independent IC work, creative output, single-threaded focus.
Manager schedule (leaders, founders)
Mon: deep-work day, no meetings
Tue–Thu: meetings 9–4, 1:1s, decisions
Fri: review, planning, deep work pm
Daily: 30-min walk · 60-min decompression
Best for: people-leadership roles, founder-CEO, multi-thread work.
Hybrid schedule
Mornings: 6–11 deep work (every day)
11–12: inbox / async
12–1: lunch
1–4: meetings (clustered Tue/Wed/Thu only)
Mon & Fri: bookends, no meetings
Best for: most operator-founders past pure-IC stage.
Recovery-priority schedule (post-burnout, season of restoration)
Wake without alarm 5+ days/week
Deep work blocks: 90 min, max 2/day
No meetings before 10am
Hard stop at 5pm — no exceptions
One full day/week: zero work, zero screens
Best for: rebuild seasons. Sustainable > productive for 90 days. Shift gradually back when reserves rebuild.
09Decision Log
A decision log is the cheapest, highest-leverage operator artefact you'll ever build. Capture the decision, the inputs, the alternatives considered, the call. Six months later, look back. The pattern of how you decide tells you more about how to improve than any retrospective.
Date / decision short-name
Decision (in one clear sentence)
Why now (what triggered the decision)
Alternatives considered (≥ 2)
Inputs / data that mattered most
Decision (what I chose) and rationale
Cost of being wrong (downside)
Reversibility — easy / costly / one-way door?
Review date (90-day default)
Two questions to answer at the 90-day review: (1) Was the decision good given what you knew at the time? (2) Was the outcome good? These are different questions. Conflating them is how operators learn the wrong lessons.
10Annual Review
Run between Christmas and New Year, 2–3 hours, somewhere quiet. The single most underrated operator practice. The honest version, written down, dated, kept.
What were the three best decisions this year?
What were the three worst decisions this year?
What did I do this year that surprised me — in a good way?
What did I do that surprised me in a bad way?
Who am I grateful for?
Who did I disappoint? What's owed?
What did I learn about how I work best?
What did I learn about how I get knocked off?
If I could re-run the year with one change, the change would be
Theme word for next year
First action on Jan 2 (specific, small, 30-min)
11Operator Principles
Seven personal operating principles. Define them once, in writing. Read them quarterly. They're the operating system underneath the year — what you'll fall back on when the calendar fails.
Principle 01
Principle 02
Principle 03
Principle 04
Principle 05
Principle 06
Principle 07
Read these out loud once a quarter. If they don't sound true anymore, edit. Principles aren't sacred — they're a current best version that updates with experience.
12Sabbatical Planner
One recharge week per quarter. Non-negotiable. Booked at the start of the year, defended like a major customer meeting. Operators who don't schedule recharge have it scheduled for them — usually as illness or burnout in Q3 or Q4.
Q1 sabbatical week
Dates (booked)
Format (full off / partial / travel)
Constraint: zero work means
Q2 sabbatical week
Dates (booked)
Format
Constraint
Q3 sabbatical week
Dates (booked)
Format
Constraint
Q4 sabbatical week
Dates (booked)
Format
Constraint
If you can't book all four right now because the year is too uncertain — book the first one. Then the second after Q1 ends. The point is the protection, not the prediction.
13Goal-to-Habit Bridge
Annual goals don't get done. Daily habits do. The bridge is translating each annual goal into a weekly habit small enough to do on the worst week of the year.
Annual goal #1
Translated to a weekly habit (small, repeatable)
Translated to a daily action (smallest possible)
Annual goal #2
Weekly habit
Daily action
Annual goal #3
Weekly habit
Daily action
If a habit is too big to do on a sick day, it's too big. Shrink the daily action until "yes" is the easy answer even on the worst day. The streak compounds; the size doesn't matter.
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