Best Laid Plans

A Simple Planning System for Living a Life That You Love

By: Sarah Hart-Unger

Narrated by: Sarah Hart-Unger

Every moment matters when you have big goals for your family, career, and the community you're committed to. The constant barrage of obligations and to-dos is exhausting―especially for women who are also managing the mental load in most areas of family life. We end up stuck in routines and habits that don't serve us, as our dreams seem to slip further and further away.

What if, instead of greeting each day in a scramble to keep up, there was a clearly laid out plan, complete with breathing room for rest and fun? In Best Laid Plans, Dr. Sarah Hart-Unger offers an intuitive planning method for setting audacious goals, working with the natural rhythms of your life in every season, and bringing a sense of peace and joy back to every day. With Best Laid Plans, you'll learn:

• How to create and accomplish nested goals for every year, month, week, and day
• The magic of planning in seasonal quintiles, or five seasons instead of four
• The airtight task management method for handling all of those pesky to-dos
• How to fill each day with meaningful moments of connection and delight

Discover a simple way to make the most of every day and live your best life.

©2026 Sarah Hart-Unger (P)2026 Tantor Media

Planning Made Simple

I've listened to the podcast before and I'm a planner enthusiast and I believe she's provided some great tools, tips and tricks for both seasoned and newbie planners. And the audiobook is a quick and easy read.

Real Life and Practical for this working mom

As a full time mother of 2, I found this book this to be practical and applicable to my real life. The strategies outlined take into account the types of challenges that working parents need to navigate when trying to set goals, plan and stay organized. I feel like is a realistic way I can plan while trying to balance my full time job and elementary aged kids.

Straightforward Planning Routine

I follow Sarah’s podcast and pre-ordered her book. I had been following her planning routine this year. It’s common sense and never feels like a chore. I enjoy looking at my weeks, months and year. I’m over 60 and still working and while I’m not juggling kids anymore, there are so many things I want to do with my time. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Every working parent will benefit from this

SHU has been an uplifting force in my life since I found her podcasts during the pandemic. This person is a ray of sunshine and listening to her audiobook was like a super dose of an organized presentation of her ideas.

This book will have her tried and true methods. But I was so grateful to see her acknowledge that people have different barriers and mental health diversity that may make execution of her ideas difficult, and she offers many modified versions. I now better understand how to do a type of nested goals planning that will work for me; even on days that don’t go as planned.

The one jarring thing is when she switches from her voice to an AI version of her voice. But after one chapter, it was fine, and I was happy that she acknowledged her limits about the work involved in recording this on a podcast episode. It was a great example of adjusting plans and pivoting based on your own needs.

Simple straightforward “followable” advice!

Step-by-step advice from a busy medical professional (like myself). Certainly a far cry from the techs bros and productivity nerds who have oodles of time to plan their morning routine! Delivery is in the author’s fast, enthusiastic style she uses for podcasting. I needed to slow it down to 0.85 speed to imbibe the points, as there is so much to learn from Sarah’s experience. Bought the kindle version to be able to read at a slower pace on a plane journey! A truly welcome addition to the “getting things done for busy people” genre!