Sign up for CuriosityStream & Nebula and start learning today: 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.
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