The 12 Week Year

The 'big idea' behind a 12-week year is redefine the year to create a sense of urgency. Why give your goals 12-months when you could get them done in 12-weeks? Is the reason we fail to achieve our goals because we've given them the wrong time frame? Brian makes many good points in this book and I'll summarize 'em below.

How many weeks are currently left in the year?

4x Living

A 12-week year forces focus because when you live by the 4x clock, you realize the value of every minute that passes... because it's not 4x more valuable than it was once before.

What does time look like when it moves at 4x speed?

In theory, if your time is 4x as valuable, then you should be able to boost your income by a 4x, right?

In 4x living, 12-weeks is equivalent to a year, a month is equivalent to a week, and a week is now a day.

If you are going to squeeze what used to take a week into 1 day, you're gonna need hyperfocus. There simply is not time left for the trivial and unimportant.

Operating at 4x efficiency requires a plan of attack. It requires that you to stick to the plan and design out the obstacles as best you can.

Takeaways

(aka. Writer Downers)

Vision sets the long-term goals and provides the emotional connection to drive execution.

Commitment is the ownership of actions and results, which is essential for follow-through and consistency.

Intentional imbalance involves focusing on a few key areas or actions that have the greatest impact on goals, rather than trying to do too much at once.

Together, these elements contribute to the success of the 12-week year approach by:

When you take time to plan before starting a complex task, you reduce the time to complete that task by 20%. Do you have all the info you need to get started? If not, it may take you 4x longer!

The 12-week plan is not a glorified checklist! Instead, you identify the most critical strategic activities from your 12-week plan and schedule them into your current week so that you achieve the goals set forth in your 12-week plan.

Think about it... you schedule important events through the week. For me, I may have 5-10 major 'commitments' each week (that incidentally almost always involve others). A typical week for me includes a few client appointments, social obligations, maybe a networking event, a hackathon, or a doctor appointment.

Whenever a todo has gotten to the painfully overdue (which may be driven by a project waiting on me OR a deadline), I schedule a block of time on my calendar to work on it.

The starting point for an effective weekly plan is your higher level 12-week plan. The 12-week plan contains all of the tactics you need to execute in order to achieve your 12-week goals.

Each tactic has a designated week for completion, and these tactics drive your weekly plan by dictating your daily actions.

The weekly plan then is simply a derivative of the 12-week plan—in essence a one-twelfth slice of the 12-week plan.

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.

When you look at it this way, the importance and power of each day becomes even greater. Your weekly plan enables you to focus your actions and be great at a few things rather than mediocre at many. To ensure that you get the most from your efforts, a weekly plan is a powerful and indispensable tool.

Your weekly plan should include:

It helps you focus on the elements of your plan that must happen each week to keep you on track with your 12 Week Year goals. Your goals in turn keep you on track with your vision. Everything is powerfully aligned. To really benefit from this tool you will need to carry it with you and work from it on a daily basis.

Focus on the Metrics (do you have a dashboard?)

When you measure what matters, what you measure matters more. Metrics build self-esteem and confidence because the metrics provide evidence of progress and achievement.

Needle Movers

A Needle Mover is a given RESULT that will have a significant impact on the success of your goal. You can break down this RESULT into ACTIONS. Once you determine your Needle Movers and create and follow a plan to achieve them you’ll see results. It's the tangible results keep you excited, they build and maintain your MOMENTUM!!

What activities move The Needle?

What 3 activities do I need to focus on today to move the needle?

Imagine taking your goal from from zero to 10 miles per hour, then from 10 to 40 mph, then from 40 to 90 mph.

Distill down your tasks. Just like when you distill down a webpage, when you distill down a task, all the BSOs are hidden from view and the core message is all all that remains.

Example, if I define that I need to generate more sales leads, close more sales, or develop some training... I'm starting to distill the essence of that needs to be completed. I don't get stuck in the how. I focus on the why. I let my genius flag fly and get to work. It comes down to tools that govern self-discipline.

Limit 3

Each week, focus on 3 needle movers.

Use 8up to distill those 3 into actionable steps. Then take those steps and schedule them in your week ahead. This becomes your GPS.

Just like my yoga teachers often offer 3 levels to each pose, your needle movers have 3 levels: 1. Level 1 - Base (the minimum to define completion) 2. Level 2 - Stretch (you know this is possible if you get past your own limitations) 3. Level 3 - Rockstar

Is it possible that by aiming for level 3, you fail to complete the task altogether? This is the curse of perfection.

A 12-week year consists of aggressive needle movers. Just remember, you don't become a rockstar overnight. It takes hours (and often years) of practice.

Rockstars are the hardest workers you'll ever meet. The more time I spend talk to the rockstars in various fields, I see it, I respect it, I honor it. The reward of hard work becomes the work itself. There's a sense of stoicism that is admirable. It's the source of self-esteem and it builds on itself. It is perhaps the true recipe of success.

Scorekeeping functions as a reality check, providing performance feedback and insight into your effectiveness. Effective measurement removes the emotion from the evaluation process and paints an honest picture of your performance. The data is not concerned with effort or intentions; it simply focuses on outcomes.

Christine Comaford talks about Needle Movers. I was fortunate to interview her back in 2009.

We all have a tendency from time to time to rationalize lackluster results, but with effective scorekeeping we are forced to confront the reality of our situation, even when it's uncomfortable. For me, a good example is my reluctance to look at my financials on a regular basis. I know I have an issue with money and asking others for money. It's a trigger point for conflict and exposes disappointment, something I seem hard-wired to avoid.

While this can be difficult, the sooner we confront reality, the sooner we can shift our actions toward producing more desirable results. That's what effective measurement does; it demands our attention and causes us to respond more immediately, increasing the likelihood of success down the road.

Measurement drives the execution process. It is the anchor of reality. Can you imagine the CEO of a large corporation not knowing the numbers? It's no different for you and me. As the CEO of your own life and business, you need to know the numbers. Measurement provides important feedback that allows you to make intelligent decisions.

I think this is why when you employ others, your obligation to meet the needs of hitting a number (so you have enough in your account to issue a regular paycheck), forces a certain kind of focus someone who works from themselves may not have. Q. Why not shift that burden to your clients? After all, it's they who benefit the most from the time and energy you spend on their projects!

Effective measurement captures both lead and lag indicators that provide comprehensive feedback necessary for informed decisions!

When your actions don't produce what you expected, you can make the necessary adjustments to your plan based on market feedback, but first you must execute the plan.

Too often people want to change the plan before they've really executed it. As a general rule, you should rarely change the plan unless you've been effectively completing your plan tactics and it is still not producing. You could have created an awesome plan, but you'll never know unless you actually implement it.

So if you are executing at a high level and the results you want are not coming, then it may be time to adjust the plan. For every action there is a reaction, so the good news is that every time you execute, you produce something, it may not be what you expected, but something will happen. This something is market feedback, and it's impossible to effectively adjust your plan without it. Without knowing what tactics you executed, any changes you make will be based purely on guesswork.

A Bias for Action

A potential use of the GSheetSite publisher is to create your 12-week plan. One where you react to what you put in front of you. This is an important distinction to dive into. When you project yourself into the future, are you ready for it?

Performance Time

4x performers break time into 3 categories:

If you follow the PT recommendations, an 'ideal' 8 hour day might look like this:

3 hours = strategic 2 hours = buffer 3 hours = breakout

(Note: He mentions these times over a week, so go with what works for you.)

Strategic Blocks

This is equivalent to taking a day away from the office to focus all your time and energy on strategic planning. Given the limited time and resources to achieve your goal, what actions will produce the desired outcome?

Buffer Blocks

How much time do you spend on the trivial and unimportant? As most of us are people pleasers, we have a hard time saying no to requests for our time. The reality is that always saying yes causes you to live in a 'reactive' world instead of a 'proactive' one.

Breakout Blocks

Where do your best ideas come from? I'll bet more often than not, they occur when you have unplugged and are out of the office. I consider my time writing, reading, at yoga, in meditation, or on the bike high value because it's often when I come up with the best ideas for my clients.

Tip: Using Timeular, you can track your time in these 3 categories.

Accountability

Key chapter!!

"...with freedom comes accountability, and with accountability comes guilt, and with guilt comes anxiety. Since our freedom leads to anxiety, it is easier to repress it than to bear it proudly."

When something is viewed as 'have to do', we view it as a burden and it's a PITA (Pain in the ass), as such, we'll do the minimum amount of work we can in order to complete the task and get it off our plate.

The key distinction here is that accountability is not about consequences, it's about taking ownership.

Once you flip the switch from 'I have to do this' to 'This is a choice and I choose to do this', the weight of the task is lifted. Because you choose to do it, you will do a much better job at it and likely get it down quicker!

A perfect example of this for me is accounting. I hate quickbooks. I hate having to send out invoices. But how much of my angst is the result of me feeling like it's a 'have to'?

"True accountability is actively confronts the truth, our freedom of choice, and the the consequences of our choices."

Until you are willing to confront reality, you will never see the truth of your current situation.

In the end, the only accountability that truly exists is self-accountability. The only person who can hold you accountable is you. To succeed you must develop the skill of 'mental honesty.' This level of honesty takes courage, requires humility, and confidence in our choices.

Change is possible when you begin to see that every minute you are making choices and those choices are entirely up to you. We choose where to put our attention. Where your attention goes, your energy flows.

So ask the question... What is my current situation?

Recommended read: Freedom and Accountability

Getting clear on the results you want to produce and being transparent on how you are performing towards those results is super helpful.

Commitment

"Commit is an action, not a word."

When you keep commits, to yourself and others, you improve relationships, strengthen confidence, and build integrity. It's how you demonstrate the

Related

A Month in a Day

Here is the One Month Day Checklist.

The Schedule (Prep is key!)

Prep is Key!

Resources

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