I am wanting to share a type of schedule that I base my show off of. No, it’s not the run time of the display, this is the planning and execution of the display. Too many times I see people fall behind schedule and they have to run around trying to complete everything in just a few weeks’ time. Trust me, that is NOT what you want to do; speaking from experience, it is way too stressful and it takes the fun out of the hobby.

So, I created a basic schedule that I try to stick to as much as possible. If you follow this schedule, you’ll keep yourself on track and you won’t be taking a full week vacation at the end of November just to try to get your display ready to go. So here it is:

Layout
Budget
January – February
Begin Making Purchases
Setup xLights (or your preferred software)
Begin Sequencing
February-April
Hardware Set up
Small Prop Set up
Testing Props
May-August
Begin Minor Set up
Test, Test, Test
August-October
Setup large items (pixel trees) if not already done
Run test shows- more than once
Tweak your sequences
Set up your show schedule and publish (Facebook, Website, etc.)
November
Run your display but constantly make small changes even though no one will ever notice but you
Make a list of your hardships-use this list to make changes for the following season
December

Some of these tasks seem pretty obvious, others not to much. No need to worry. I am going to go more in-depth with each of these topics within the next couple of weeks. I’ll be starting a video series to help explain my madness and give real-world examples of how this schedule works.

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