The 12 Week Year, by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington, is a revolutionary guide that transforms your yearly goals into a series of 12-week objectives, intensifying urgency, focus, and productivity. By sidestepping the pitfalls of annualized thinking, this book empowers both individuals and organizations to drive impressive results in all areas of life. Authored by leading experts in execution and implementation, The 12 Week Year challenges the traditional concept of a year, accelerating your path to success.
Here are my favorite twelve takeaways from the book.
The condensed year
“Forget about a year. By now you can see the pitfalls associated with annualized thinking. Let’s redefine a year: A year is no longer 12 months, it is now only 12 weeks. That’s right, a year is now a 12 week period. There are no longer four periods in a year; that’s old thinking. Now, there is just a 12 Week Year, followed by the next 12 Week Year, ad infinitum. Each 12 week period stands on its own—it is your year.“
Define your goals
“Your plan should start by identifying your overall goal(s) for the 12 weeks. The goal defines success for the 12 Week Year. It represents a great 12 weeks, and also represents intentional progress toward your longer-term vision.“
Review your plans
“To use your weekly plan effectively, you will need to spend the first 15 or 20 minutes at the beginning of each week to review your progress from the past week and plan the upcoming one. In addition, the first five minutes of each day should be spent reviewing your weekly plan to plan that day’s activities. A 12 Week Year creates greater focus by highlighting the value of each week. With the 12 Week Year, a year is now equivalent to 12 weeks, a month is now a week, and a week is now a day.“
Performance time
“[T]he key to successful time use—intentional time use—is not trying to eliminate these unplanned interruptions, but instead to block out regular time each week dedicated to your strategically important tasks… There are three primary components of performance time: strategic blocks, buffer blocks, and breakout blocks.
- Strategic Blocks: A strategic block is a three-hour block of uninterrupted time that is scheduled into each week. During this block you accept no phone calls, no faxes, no emails, no visitors, no anything. Instead, you focus all of your energy on preplanned tasks—your strategic and money-making activities… For most people, one strategic block per week is sufficient.
- Buffer Blocks: Buffer blocks are designed to deal with all of the unplanned and low-value activities—like most email and voicemail—that arise throughout a typical day. Almost nothing is more unproductive and frustrating than dealing with constant interruptions, yet we’ve all had days when unplanned items dominated our time. For some, one 30-minute buffer block a day is sufficient, while for others, two separate one-hour blocks may be necessary.
- Breakout Blocks: One of the key factors contributing to performance plateaus is the absence of free time… An effective breakout block is at least three-hours long and spent on things other than work. It is time scheduled away from your business during normal business hours that you will use to refresh and reinvigorate your mind, so that when you return to work, you can engage with more focus and energy.“
Greatness vs. mediocrity
“[T]he difference between greatness and mediocrity on a daily and weekly basis is slim, yet the difference in results down the road is tremendous. The difference between greatness and mediocrity for a salesperson is two or three extra appointments a week, five or ten more calls a day, three hours out of a 45-hour workweek spent working on their business. For a manager or leader, it’s recognizing the good work of one more person each day, delegating a task instead of doing it themselves, spending three hours of their week on strategic priorities, giving verbal praise and encouragement to someone who’s struggling. On a daily and weekly basis these differences seem minor, but in the long run they are significant.“
Time horizons
“There are three time horizons that you’ll want to focus your vision on:
- Long-term aspirations: Take a few minutes right now and think about all of the things that you want to have, do, and be in your life. What is most important to you physically, spiritually, mentally, relationally, financially, professionally, and personally? How much time freedom do you want? What income do you desire? Write everything you can think of on a sheet of paper; leave nothing off the page. Now, take the items from your page that you connect with emotionally and construct a vision for your life 5, 10, 15 years into the future. Be bold, be courageous; create a life vision that inspires you and fulfills your purpose. There are no right or wrong answers. This is the life you deeply desire.
- Mid-term goals, about three years into the future: Based on your long-term vision, what do you want to create over the next three years? Describe in as much detail as possible what a great personal and professional life would look like three years from today. The more specific you are at this stage, the easier it will be to create your 12 week goals and your plan.
- 12 Weeks“
Create good 12 week plans
“There are five criteria that will help you create better 12 week plans when you are writing goals and tactics:
- Criteria 1: Make them specific and measurable. For each goal and/or tactic, be sure to quantify and qualify what success looks like. How many calls will you make? How many pounds will you lose? How far will you run? How much income will you earn?
- Criteria 2: State them positively. Focus on what you want to happen that is positive. For example, rather than focusing on a 2 percent error rate, you would target a 98 percent accuracy rate.
- Criteria 3: Ensure they are a realistic stretch. If you can accomplish the goal without doing anything differently, then you probably need to stretch more. If it is absolutely impossible, then factor it back a little.
- Criteria 4: Assign accountability. This applies to people who are executing as part of a team (if you’re on your own, the accountability is all yours).
- Criteria 5: Be time-bound. There is nothing like a deadline to get things started and keep them moving. Make sure to include a date by which the goal is to be reached, or the tactic is to be executed.
each tactic should start with a verb, be a complete sentence, and be executable as written in the week that it is due.”
Planning your 12 week goals
“To get started, write your first 12 week goal as Goal 1. Write each additional goal separately. You may find that you have just one goal; that’s fine. Next, for each of your goals, define the highest-priority daily and weekly actions that you must take to reach that goal. In order to do this it might be helpful to brainstorm on a separate sheet of paper all the things you could do and then select the ones that will have the greatest impact. Some actions may be repeating (e.g., “work out each day”), while other actions will happen only once in the 12 weeks (e.g.,“join a health club”). For those actions you decide to implement write them as full sentences that start with a verb and describe the action that you intend to take. Finally, specify in the “Week Due” column the week (1 through 12) in which you intend to execute each action.“
The weekly plan
“We strongly recommend that you print a copy and calendarize these critical activities. The printed weekly plan then becomes the document that you use to manage each day and ensure that these items get completed this week.“
Time blocking
When time blocking, schedule a 3-hour strategic block early in the week to work on your business. Schedule 30-60 minute blocks twice a day for low level activities. Schedule one 3 hour relaxing breakout block per month until you’re on track to reach your 12 week goal. Once you’re on track, schedule one breakout block per week.
Put it in the calendar
Input your model week to your calendar as recurring tasks. Adjust at the beginning of the week
The 13th week
Every 12-week year ends with a 13th week as a buffer to wrap up, reflect, and plan the next year
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