The past year has delivered many learning curves for me - and funnily enough, even though some of them have been painful, I am very grateful in a strange kind of way. It is becoming clearer to me that my biggest lessons often come from what appear to be the most painful of situations. Can you relate?

And with the aim of being of service to you, I felt it would be helpful to share just one of these lessons together with what I feel is an ideal solution because I know from speaking to past, present and potential clients, it is a very common scenario.

The Learning Curve

You see, it literally has been physical pain that has pushed me to see just how much I have been neglecting my physical body. Without going into the finer details, my symptoms took me to paying for private medical care and finally being diagnosed with Crohn's disease. This is a chronic condition for which doctors say there is no cure and the best they can offer is control via medication.

Now me being me, I am not going to buy into the €no cure€ proclamation. And with support from my wise friend and mentor, Katja, neither am I going to identify myself with the label, Crohn's disease. Instead I see this as my responsibility for my own health hence my focus for the year is self care.

On the practical front I am experimenting with all foods and drinks - being very strict at the moment and thanks to my girls who created a homemade Food Diary, I am tracking it all. I am also making time for exercise in the form of walking and more yoga and consulting with a homeopath.

I recognize that a big part of the problem has been the lack of time for self care so I have committed to make changes. The first step was to invest in a coaching programme which would support me in creating a big picture plan for 2014 for my business together with a day to day action plan thereby creating the time for me. The most important piece was to plan in my holidays and ensure I have the time for the self care I have committed to.

It has been an extremely eye opening exercise and a real confirmation that in the past I have expected far too much of myself and therefore ended up feeling overwhelmed, often fire fighting rather than achieving and working far too many hours. This is an all too common scenario for the solo-preneur. Most of my colleagues on the programme have found just the same - they are trying to do too much and ending up achieving much less due to the lack of focus.

Interestingly, this is something I help my clients with over and over again! (Clients you have my permission to hold my feet to the fire!) Don't they say you have to teach what you need to learn? It was impossible for me to see my blind spot of trying to fit too much in without the support of the coaching programme.

An unexpected bonus through planning

And now I have a strategic plan. A plan for the year, for each quarter and for each week all stemming from the few goals I have set myself. I can see at a glance what my actions are on a daily basis to reach those goals. This is already saving me time and energy and the coolest part so far has been the creative flow of ideas as I have been plotting out my actions. A totally unexpected but very welcome bonus.

It has also highlighted the importance of keeping it simple and doable. Less is more. Choosing to focus on just 3 strategic objectives per quarter has certainly made me fine tune my offerings and hone in on what's really important to me and how I can serve my clients in the most effective way possible.

Here's a quick list of the basic steps I took to create my daily action plan so that you can get going on your own:

1. Set annual income goal

2. Mark down holidays on calendar

3. Decide on programmes/products to sell over year

4. Decide how many of each to sell to reach goal

5. Plot on calendar when I will sell them including launches, etc.

6. Create 3 strategic objectives for each quarter

7. Plan out actions for first 90 days on week by week basis stemming from objectives

8. Plan 3 ways to reward myself for my hard work - one of them is a massage!

Is it sexy?

Planning is not the sexiest strategy in the world I know, but believe me it is one of the most profitable strategies you can adopt for your business. It has the capacity to free you up both time wise and energetically. Planning can save 4-10 hours per week.

And if you are thinking I want to be free and creative to go with the flow and follow inspiration, there is room for all that. This is certainly not about writing a plan and having it set in stone. It's about having a plan to create freedom, to free up energy and to feel inspired. As I said, one of the most unexpected benefits of planning has been the creative ideas that have flowed.

As Eisenhower so famously said €Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable€.

So as we enter a new year, I invite you to create your plan for 2014 - use the steps above or use your own methods - whatever works best for you.