March 2026 Planning Tips and Resources

Mom and I just finished one of our household rituals: watching the Winter Olympics. Her favorite is figure skating. I'm not sure I have a favorite, but I do have a fascination: curling, where teams slide granite stones across the ice to a target.

What fascinates me about this sport is its precision: how tiny decisions in how the stone is thrown and the tiny adjustments that reduce friction between stone and ice (go sweepers!) affect the stone's trajectory and eventual resting place in the target circle (the “house”).

As in curling, friction is often the enemy of our personal or team projects, too. Some of this friction we might not even be aware of, until we see the curling stone of our project slow and stall, rather than reaching the house for a score.

In March, the final month of Q1, we often sense the presence of friction even though we can't identify exactly what's causing it. We feel that slowdown right when we think we should be speeding up, reaching our groove, and crossing milestones at a clip.

Lots of things can create friction for you in your personal projects, or in the work you and your team do together:

1. Unclear objectives (either yours or your team's) that have you drifting instead of focusing.

2. Not leaving yourself breadcrumbs, so you need to spend more time relearning the project when you start it again.

3. Broken printers (you know the ones).

4. Procrastination, maybe because you're fighting the air sandwich, you're not playing to your GATES, or you haven't engaged your success pack.

5. Communication difficulties between teammates that lead to misunderstandings, rework, and even hard feelings.

6. A process or procedure that isn't documented, so it's done slightly differently each time, or needs to be trained each time a new person picks it up.

These are just a few examples of frictions that saps the time, energy, and attention you and your team would rather put toward work that actually matters.

As you're reviewing Q1 and planning Q2 this month, now is a great time to identify some friction points you can reduce or eliminate, and get your curling stone project grooving across the ice to hit its target.

~Steve

Free subscribers: now might also be a great time for you to give our paid subscription a try. $10 a month will get you all these resources, our two monthly calls, the full digital suite of Momentum Planners, and more. Cancel anytime.

Mark your calendars for our March events, open to our paid subscribers:

• Leadership Strategy Session (LSS): Wednesday, March 4, 2026, at 11:00 am PST
  March's Focus: Finding the Drag in Your Team's Work

  In almost every team, there are patterns of waste hiding in plain sight. They aren't signs of a bad team. They're signs of a system with friction that no one has named yet. In this session, we'll identify where the drag is coming from and what to address first. We'll focus on the patterns most common in knowledge work and creative teams. The goal isn't to turn your team into a machine. It's to clear the friction that's making good work harder than it needs to be before the Q2 ramp-up adds more to everyone's plate.

• Monthly Momentum Call (MMC): Wednesday, March 18, 2026, at 11:00 am PDT*
  March's Focus: What's Actually Getting in Your Way?
  There's a real difference between the space that restores you and the friction that just drains you. This month, we're looking at the latter: the patterns that keep showing up, the places where you lose momentum, not because the work is hard but because something keeps snagging you on the way to it.

*Please note that North America shifts to daylight saving time on March 8. If you're joining from outside North America, we recommend checking your local time before joining.

The Momentum Planners were built to keep your most important work front and center. Download the free version of our March planners to help you determine what projects you want to accomplish in the new year.

Paid subscribers can access the full suite of dated planners below. 👇 If you don't see them, please make sure you're logged in to your paid account.

If you don't have a paid subscription yet, now's a great time to upgrade.