The 12 week year is a term coined by Brian Moran and it teaches you how to reach your
goals for the course of 12 weeks instead of the typical 12 months.
The main principle is that it is possible to achieve a year's worth of work in around
three months through planning and executing tasks that force you to ignore or discard
projects that are low-value, and by improving focus on relevant work.
The 12 Week Year is a good concept to implement in your own productivity system if you usually
fail at accomplishing your resolutions or yearly projects, because the main concept
of this particular system is allowing you to get rid of the idea that you need an entire
year to see results, or that you need to spread out a project or a habit for 12 months for
it to be accomplished.
This system is comprised of 4 steps:
1) creating a compelling vision;
2) setting 12-week goals;
3) Creating action plans for each one of those goals and
4) Scheduling planning and reviewing sessions.
Implementing the 12 week year starts with thinking of a compelling vision for what you
want to accomplish for the course of that time period.
More than a bunch of resolutions for three months, a compelling vision should work as
an overarching idea of the type of person you want to be, the habits and routines you
want to implement in your life, or the type of projects you want to dedicate your time
to.
You can create a vision board to help you with this step, journal your ideas or create
a list.
Despite being a simple step, creating a compelling vision will dictate how you'll face the rest
of the 12 week year process and will serve as a major guideline to set goals, take action
and manage your time.
Next you should set smaller, 12-week goals to help achieve that vision and these can
either be directed towards implementing a new habit, finishing a personal project, completing
an item in your bucket list, you name it.
The positive thing about these goals is that they are short-term, which means that there's
a smaller chance that things in your life will change so dramatically as to impact your
initial plan.
Also, 12 week goals allow you to constantly reevaluate the quality of your planning while
also giving you a firm time frame to force yourself to make it work.
But don't forget to be mindful of the goals you set.
Trying to change everything at once and creating a vision that is too ambitious won't lead
to success ***and*** will leave you feeling unaccomplished.
Focusing on fixing and working on one area of your life at a time is more important than
trying to balance everything.
Furthermore, your goals should be broken into action plans - a bridge between your vision
and your goals.
That action plan should answer how you should be working daily **and** weekly to achieve
that goal.
These action plans can be as detailed or as general as you want; what's important is that
you are able to identify the critical actions to complete your goal and then schedule them
in your calendar or set time frames to complete them.
Your actions should then be tracked accordingly, either through a habit tracker, an app or
even a journal.
Tracking your progress reinforces your good habits and visually establishes your progress
throughout time.
It is also recommended to schedule **planning and reviewing sessions.** These allow you
to regain focus in your goals despite what's going on in the rest of your life.
The book suggests you to do this from 15 to 20 minutes at the beginning of each week to
review your progress from the past week and plan the upcoming one.
Despite being able to create your vision, setting goals and your action plan, you also
need to use your calendar to actually make the time to finish your work.
And here, developing time management skills is essential to make sure you keep on track
with your action plan.
Knowing what is your most productive time of the day, creating buffers during the week
and having a dedicated space or environment to tackle your work are all factors that contribute
to a better workflow.
If there is something I want to change about
myself this year is how much I learn on a daily basis.
Between working, managing a business and trying to conciliate family life with some well-deserved
self-care, sometimes there isn't enough time in the day dedicated to education.
That's why it's much easier to rely on platforms that allow us to watch interesting content
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