Did your spring plan already get hijacked?

If you live in a small city in northern Canada, you know exactly what spring looks like.

It is not pretty.

Dirty brown water runs along every curb carrying the gravel that kept you alive on icy roads all winter. Potholes that could swallow a tire appear overnight on streets that were perfectly fine in February. Step off the main path and there is a genuine chance you end up stuck in mud up to your ankles.

Spring in a northern small city is not a gentle awakening.

It is a mess you have to navigate carefully before anything beautiful shows up.

And I want to ask you honestly — does that description sound familiar in your business right now?

Because for a lot of small city business owners, spring arrives the same way every year.

The calendar starts filling up fast.

New projects appear from every direction. Requests come in from clients, community organizations, family commitments, and well-meaning people who just need a little of your time. Opportunities that sound genuinely good show up at the same moment as obligations you cannot avoid.

And before you have had a single intentional conversation with yourself about what you actually want this season to look like, the next three months are already halfway spoken for.

That is not momentum.

That is a calendar hijack.

And if you do not catch it right now, at the start of the season, you will feel it in June when you look back and realize spring happened to you instead of for you.

Stay with me to the end. I have a free seasonal planning checklist this week that will help you get intentional about spring in under twenty minutes.

Here is the thing about flexibility.

Most business owners wear it like a badge.

“I stay flexible. I respond to what comes. I do not over-plan because things always change anyway.”

And there is wisdom in that.

But flexibility without intention is not a strategy.

It is just chaos with a good attitude.

The owners who finish spring energized who look back at April, May, and June and feel genuinely proud of what they built, the relationships they deepened, the projects they completed did not get there by staying loose and seeing what happened.

They got there because at the start of the season they asked themselves a question that most owners skip entirely.

The question is this: what does a great spring actually look like for me?

Not for their clients.

Not for their team.

Not for the community organizations asking for their time and support.

For them. For their business. For their family. For the life they are trying to build.

That question takes about twenty minutes to answer well.

And the owners who answer it at the start of spring are the ones who navigate the potholes and the mud with a clear destination in mind instead of just reacting to whatever the road throws at them next.

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The seasonal intention rhythm that changes everything

The retirement lifestyle is not built in a single dramatic decision.

It is built season by season, through small acts of intentionality that compound over time.

Here is the simple rhythm I use and teach:

Before the season starts, answer four questions.

Question 1: What is the one business project this season that will move the needle most?

Not a list of ten. One.

The project that, if you looked back in three months and had done it well, would make the biggest difference to your revenue, your momentum, or your freedom.

Write it down. Give it a specific outcome. Protect time for it before anything else gets on the calendar.

Question 2: What personal pursuit or passion project deserves space this season?

This is the one most owners skip.

Spring in northern BC means hiking trails opening up, motorcycle weather arriving, camping season beginning. If those things matter to you and they should, because they are what the retirement lifestyle is actually made of they need to be on the calendar before the season fills up with everyone else’s priorities.

A pursuit that never gets scheduled never gets done.

Question 3: What family moment do I want to make sure happens this spring?

One thing.

Maybe it is a weekend trip. Maybe it is consistently making it to your kid’s games this season. Maybe it is a date night rhythm with your spouse that actually holds.

Name it. Schedule it. Protect it like a client appointment.

Question 4: Whose project am I carrying that actually belongs to someone else?

This is the most important question on the list.

Spring has a way of loading up your plate with good things that are genuinely not yours to carry. Community boards. Volunteer commitments. Favours that became recurring obligations. Client work that has expanded beyond its original scope.

Name one thing you are carrying this spring that belongs to someone else.

Then decide what you are going to do about it.

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This week’s free tool: The Spring Intention Checklist

I have put together a simple one-page branded checklist you can download, print, and work through in about twenty minutes.

It walks you through all four questions with space to write your answers and a simple commitment section at the bottom to anchor your spring intention.

Download it below and carve out twenty minutes this week before the season gets away from you.

Download Free Checklist

Or if you want to work through it conversationally first, copy and paste this into ChatGPT or Claude:

“I am a small city business owner and I want to set a clear intention for spring so the season works for me instead of running me. Ask me four questions, one at a time: what is the one business project this spring that will move the needle most for my revenue or freedom, what personal pursuit or passion project deserves protected time this season, what family moment do I want to make sure happens before summer, and what am I currently carrying that actually belongs to someone else. After I answer all four, write me a short one-paragraph spring intention statement I can put somewhere visible to keep me anchored when the season gets loud.”

Run it. Print the statement it gives you. Put it somewhere you will actually see it.

Then come back and tell me what is your one business project for spring?

Drop it in the comments below.

I read every one.

Get above the grind and grow.

Jared