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The 12 Week Year by Brian Moran

The 12 Week Year by Brian Moran

by Parker · 184 things on Twos

Get more done in 12 weeks than other do in 12 months
“If we did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.” - Thomas Edison
“Most of us have two lives: the lives we live and the lives we are capable of living.” - Steven Pressfield
This life isn ’t driven by the you who settles or gives in to procrastination and doubt, but by the optimal you, the best you, the confident you, the healthy you. The you who shows up with your best stuff, making things happen, making a difference, living a life of significance.
Knowledge is only powerful if you use it, if you act on it.
The barrier standing between you and the life you are capable of living is a lack of consistent execution. Effective execution will set you free. It is the path to accomplish the things you desire.
“It ’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” —John Wooden
“You can ’t build a reputation on what you ’re going to do.” —Henry Ford
Annual goals and plans are often a barrier to high performance.
There is no question you will do better with annual goals and plans than without any goals or plans; however, we have found that this annual process inherently limits performance.
There ’s nothing like a deadline to get you motivated.
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit." —Aristotle
It's important to understand that the results you achieve are a direct byproduct of the actions you take. Your actions, in turn, are manifestations of your underlying thinking. Ultimately, it is your thinking that drives your results; it is your thinking that creates your experiences in life.
Your results are ultimately a manifestation of your thinking.
To execute successfully it is essential to have a strong emotional stake in the outcome.
Without a compelling reason to choose otherwise, most people will take comfortable actions over uncomfortable ones. The issue is that the important actions are often the uncomfortable ones. In our experience, the number-one thing that you will have to sacrifice to be great, to achieve what you are capable of, and to execute your plans, is your comfort. The secret to living your life to its potential is to value the important stuff above your own comfort. Therefore, the critical first step to executing well is creating and maintaining a compelling vision of the future hat you want even more than you desire your own short-term comfort, and then aligning your shorter term goals and plans, with that long-term vision.
In order to achieve a level of performance that is greater than your current performance, you will need a vision of the future that is bigger than the present. You must find a vision with which you are emotionally connected. Without a compelling vision, you will discover there is no reason to go through the pain of change.
“Behind every impossible achievement is a dreamer of impossible dreams.” —Robert K. Greenleaf
“All my life I wanted to be somebody. Now I see I should have been more specific.” —Lily Tomlin
The first step is to create a personal vision, a vision that clearly captures and articulates what you want in life. The personal vision should define the life you want to live in all areas, including spiritual, relationships, family, income, lifestyle, health, and community.
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” —Mary Oliver
“A vision without a plan is a pipe dream.”
Working from a plan reduces mistakes, saves time, and provides focus.
“If you don ’t know where you are going, you ’ll end up someplace else.” —Yogi Berra
Long-term results are created by the actions you take every day.
While we plan for the future, we act in the day. To be truly effective, your daily activity must align with your long-term vision, strategies, and tactics.
“The greatest predictor of your future are your daily actions.”
It ’s not enough to have the intention of changing; you have to act on that intention for things to get better—and not just once, but consistently. As the ancient Roman philosopher Lucretius pointed out: “The fall of dropping water wears away the stone.” Consistent action on the critical tasks needed to reach your goal is the key to getting what you want in life.
If you want to know what your future holds, look to your actions; they are the best predictor of your future.
“An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
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.
The only way to know if you are achieving is through measurement—that is, keeping score.
Measurement builds self-esteem and confidence because it documents progress and achievement.
Physics tells us that 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.
“Truth is the only safe ground to stand on.” —Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Everything you want to accomplish in life requires an investment of your time, so when you want to improve your results, you must face the fact that your supply of time is completely inelastic—and perishable.
Time is the most squandered of all personal resources.
“It’s not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?” —Henry David Thoreau
“If we take care of the minutes, the years will take care of themselves.” - Benjamin Franklin
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.
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. The power of buffer blocks comes from grouping together activities that tend to be unproductive so that you can increase your efficiency in dealing with them and take greater control over the rest of your day.
Breakout Blocks: One of the key factors contributing to performance plateaus is the absence of free time. Very often entrepreneurs and professionals get caught up in working longer and harder, but this approach kills your energy and enthusiasm. To achieve greater results, what ’s often necessary is not actually working more hours, but rather taking some time away from work. It ’s not by chance that people often quote the famous proverb “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” When we don ’t take time off from work, we can lose our creative edge. 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.
“If you are not in control of your time, you are not in control of your results.”
The more you can create routine in your days and weeks, the more effective your execution will be. The best way to accomplish this is to create a picture of an ideal week.
Consider when you tend to be at your best. Are you a morning person or are you better in the afternoon or evening? Schedule your most important activities during your prime time.
When something is a have-to it ’s a burden, it ’s cumbersome, and, at best, you meet the minimum standards; however, the realization that you ultimately have choice creates a very different scenario. When you choose to do something, you are able to tap your resources and give your best. It is a much more empowering stance. Ultimately, you choose your actions, your results, your consequences.
The only things you control are your thinking and your actions. But those are enough if (and it ’s a big if) you are willing to own them.
At the end of the day, the only accountability that truly exists is self-accountability. The only person who can hold you accountable for anything is you, and to be successful you must develop the mental honesty and courage to own your thinking, actions, and results.
To be truly great at what we do, we have to become better at keeping our promises.
“Commitment is an act, not a word.” —Jean-Paul Sartre
A commitment is a personal promise. Keeping your promises to others builds trust and strong relationships, and keeping promises to yourself builds character, esteem, and success.
Here are the four keys to successful commitments:
Strong desire: In order to fully commit to something, you need a clear and personally compelling reason. Without a strong desire you will struggle when the implementation gets difficult, but with a compelling desire, seemingly insurmountable obstacles are seen as challenges to be met. The desired end result needs to be meaningful enough to get you through the hard times and keep you on track.
Keystone actions: Once you have an intense desire to accomplish something, you then need to identify the core actions that will produce the result you ’re after. In most endeavors there are often many activities that help you accomplish your goal. However there are usually a few core activities that account for the majority of the results, and in some cases there are only one or two keystone actions that ultimately produce the result. It is critical that you identify these keystones and focus on them.
Count the costs: Commitments require sacrifice. In any effort there are benefits and costs. Too often we claim to commit to something without considering the costs, the hardships that will have to be overcome to accomplish your desire. Costs can include time, money, risk, uncertainty, loss of comfort, and so on. Identifying the costs before you commit allows you to consciously choose whether you are willing to pay the price of your commitment. When you face any of these costs, it is extremely helpful to recognize that you anticipated them and decided that reaching your goal was worth it.
Act on commitments, not feelings: There will be times when you won ’t feel like doing the critical activities. We’ve all been there. Getting out of bed at 5:30 a.m. to jog in the winter cold can be daunting, especially when you ’re in a toasty warm bed. It is during these times that you will need to learn to act on your commitments instead of your feelings. If you don ’t, you will. never build any momentum and will get stuck continually restarting or, as is so often the case, giving up. Learning to do the things you need to do, regardless of how you feel, is a core discipline for success.
Most people are running so fast, they miss life. They are in one place physically and another place mentally. You are most effective when you are mentally where you are physically—when you are present in the moment.
“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”—Abraham Lincoln
Results are not the attainment of greatness, but simply confirmation of it. You become great long before the results show it. It happens in an instant, the moment you choose to do the things you need to do to be great.
“Let him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present.”—Roger Ward Babson
Regardless of how you ’ve performed in the past or how you are performing currently, you can be great, beginning today, simply by choosing to do the things you know you need to do. It really is no more complicated than that. In the end, you are either great in the moment or not at all.
Don ’t settle for anything less than the life you are capable of. Make a commitment to be great each day and watch what can happen in just 12 short weeks.
It is natural to think that the goal of life balance is to spend equal time and energy in the various areas of your life, but in reality, that is not practical and it would not necessarily create the life you desire. Trying to spend equal time in each area is unproductive and often frustrating. Life balance is not about equal time in each area; life balance is more about intentional imbalance .
Life balance is achieved when you are purposeful about how and where you spend your time, energy, and effort. At different times in your life you will choose to focus on one area over another, and that ’s perfectly fine, provided it ’s intentional. Life has different seasons, each with its own set of challenges and blessings.
“There ’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.”—Jack Welch
To decide what to focus on, start with your vision, then rate yourself in the seven areas of life balance (i.e., spiritual, spouse/partner, family, community, physical, personal, and business). I like to use a scale from 1 to 10 to rate my level of satisfaction.
“A year from now you ’ll wish you had started today!”
8 elements that are fundamental to high performance in any endeavor: vision, planning, process control, measurement, time use, accountability, commitment, greatness in the moment.
3 principles the determine an individual's effectiveness and success:
Accountability: Accountability is ultimately ownership . It is a character trait, a life stance, a willingness to own actions and results, regardless of the circumstances. The very nature of accountability rests on the understanding that each and every one of us has freedom of choice. It is this freedom of choice that is the foundation of accountability. The ultimate aim of accountability is to continually ask one ’s self, “What more can I do to get the result?”
Commitment: Commitment is a personal promise that you make to yourself. Keeping your promises to others builds strong relationships, and keeping promises to yourself builds character, esteem, and success.
Greatness in the Moment: Greatness is not achieved when a great result is reached, but long before that, when an individual makes the choice to do what is necessary to become great. The results are not the attainment of greatness, but simply confirmation of it. You become great long before the results show it. It happens in an instant, the moment you choose to do the things you need to do to be great, and each moment that you continue to choose to do those things.
The five disciplines for effective execution:
Vision: A compelling vision creates a clear picture of the future. It is critical that your business vision aligns with and enables your personal vision. This alignment ensures a powerful emotional connection that promotes a sustained commitment, and continual action.
Planning: An effective plan clarifies and focuses on the top-priority initiatives and actions needed to achieve the vision. A good plan is constructed in a manner that facilitates effective implementation.
Process Control: Process control consists of a set of tools and events that align your daily actions with the critical actions in your plan. These tools and events ensure that more of your time is spent on strategic and money making activities.
Measurement: Measurement drives the process. It is the anchor of reality. Effective measurement combines both lead and lag indicators that provide comprehensive feedback necessary for informed decision making.
Time Use: Everything happens in the context of time. If you are not in control of your time, then you are not in control of your results. Using your time with clear intention is a must.
If you don ’t have a clear, compelling vision, then the other disciplines really don ’t matter because you are not living a life by design but by chance. If you have a vision but no plan, then you have a pipe dream. If you have a vision and a focused plan but lack process control, then you ’ll have a lot of frustration, because some days you will execute and make progress and some days you won ’t. If you have those disciplines in place but lack the courage to keep score, then there is no way for you to know what ’s working and what isn ’t. There is no way for you to make game-time adjustments that can accelerate your success. Finally, if all of those are in place but you are not intentional about what you say yes to and what you say no to, then the day is controlling you.
The five stages that people move through emotionally when changing their behavior are: 1. Uninformed optimism 2. Informed pessimism 3. Valley of despair 4. Informed optimism 5. Success and fulfillment
“If you think you can or think you can ’t, you ’re right.” - Henry Ford
The execution journey is first a thinking journey. If you think that something is impossible it is. The most important thing is to believe that you can reach your goals.
Focus on three time horizons for your vision: 1. Long-term aspirations 2. Mid-term goals, about three years into the future 3. 12 Weeks
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.
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.
A good plan starts with a good goal. If your goal is not specific or measurable, the plan that you write will also be vague.
Each of these goals then becomes a planning target for which you need to write tactics. Tactics start with a verb, and are complete sentences.
Five criteria for writing goals and tactics to create better 12 week plans:
Make them specific and measurable. For each goal and/or tactic, be sure to quantify and qualify what success looks like.
State them positively. Focus on what you want to happen that is positive.
Ensure they are a realistic stretch. If you can accomplish the goal without doing anything differently, then you probably need to stretch more.
Assign accountability. Individual accountability for each goal and tactic is critical! Everyone ’s challenge is no one ’s challenge.
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.
A 12 week plan is made up of goals. Each goal is broken down into tactics to achieve that goal with a due date even if it is "each week"
Deciding where you are going is the fi rst step to getting there.
Effective planning absolutely begins with a well-written, specific, and measurable 12 week goal—a goal that you own, that, if you hit it, creates meaningful benefits for you—a goal that makes a difference.
Your 12 week goals need to align with your long-term vision.
Why is your 12 week goal important to you? If you hit it, what will be different?
“A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” - George Patton
Don ’t overanalyze the content of your plan. Don ’t be concerned that your plan isn ’t perfect—there are no perfect plans. Once you have a good plan, your execution of the tactics will help you to learn what works best so you can refine your plan from there.
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.
Before you put your plan down, ask yourself these questions and write out your responses:
What actions will you struggle with?
What will you do to overcome those struggles?
If you take time to plan before engaging with a complex task, you reduce the overall time required to complete the task by as much as 20 percent.
Focus is critical. If you establish too many goals, you end up with too many priorities and too many tactics to effectively execute. Everything cannot be a priority. You will need to say no to some things in order to be great at the things that matter most. It takes courage to limit your focus to a few key areas.
In most cases, implementing every tactic you can think of is not necessary and, in fact, can be a hindrance.
The weekly plan is populated with the tactics from the 12 week plan that are due that particular week.
“There is no such thing as a self-made man. You will reach your goals only with the help of others.” - George Shinn
If you are implementing change, don ’t go it alone. Your chances of success are seven times greater if you employ peer support.
The WAM (Weekly Accountability Meeting) is a short meeting that is typically held on Monday morning after everyone has had a chance to plan their week and it lasts approximately 15 to 30 minutes. This is not a punitive session where we try to hold others accountable and dole out negative consequences or tongue lashing for those who are faltering. The WAM is used to confront breakdowns, recognize progress, create focus, and encourage action.
The weekly routine consists of three steps:
Score your week
Plan your week
Participate in a WAM
Do not dilute your plan by adding all the lower-level activities that you do in the course of your day. Keep the weekly plan for only strategic items and commitments.
Most new tactics should be added to the 12 week plan first, and then flow through to the weekly plan. This prevents you from getting drawn into urgent activities that are not necessarily strategic.
In general, the more frequent a measure is, the more useful it is.
The lead indicators are the things you do, lag indicators are the results of the things you do. Pick 3-4 lead and lag indicators to track for each goal, each week.
A 2005 time-use study published by Basex, a business research firm, concluded that 28 percent of the average professional ’s time in a day was spent on interruptions and associated recovery time! That ’s about 11 distracted hours in a 40-hour week.
“ Eventually everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
To accomplish what you desire will take sacrifice. The number-one thing you will need to sacrifice is your comfort.
There are three components that form the foundation of effective time use; they are: strategic blocks, buffer blocks, and breakout blocks.
Strategic blocks are three hours in length and should be scheduled early in your week so that if one gets interrupted or cancelled, you have time to reschedule it. They are blocks of time when you work on your business, not in it. Strategic blocks should also be scheduled during times when your work activity is typically lowest. One strategic block per week is usually adequate.
Buffer blocks are designed to deal with the lower-level activity and are typically between 30 minutes and one hour in length, scheduled one to two times per day. The actual amount of time for buffer blocks will depend upon the amount of email, phone calls, interruptions, and other “administrivia” you normally are required to handle.
Breakout blocks are designed to prevent burnout and create more free time. They are three hours in length, and should be scheduled once a week. We recommend that you only have one per month until everything else is working, and you are executing well.
In addition to these three categories, you will also want to schedule blocks of time to execute other important activities.
5 steps:
Block out 15 minutes first thing Monday morning to review the prior week and to plan for the current week.
Schedule your three-hour strategic block.
Schedule one to two buff er blocks each day, Monday through Friday, typically one in the morning and one near the end of the day (e.g., 11:00-12:00 and 4:00-5:00). Remember that the amount of buff er time varies by individual and administrative workload.
Schedule a breakout block.
Schedule all additional important activities. (Client and prospect appointments, standing meetings, marketing and sales, planning, required administrative and operational tasks, preparation for client meetings and customer service, project work, referral lunches, one-on-one coaching sessions, personal tasks)
Strategic block, sample agenda, 3 hours
Reconnect with your vision: 5-10 minutes. Review your vision and assess your progress. Are you advancing, are you making progress, is there still an emotional connection?
12 week review: 10-15 minutes. Review your metrics. Look at your results against your goals. Inspect your weekly execution score and your lead and lag indicators. Are you executing at a high level and is it producing? If not, what can you do this week to improve?
Assess performance breakdowns: 10-20 minutes. Is there a breakdown? If so, what is the root cause? Do you need to adjust your plan, or just execute better?
Work on plan tactics: 2–2.5 hours. Use this time to complete tactics from your 12 week plan.
Other examples of strategic block activity:
Read a book.
Take an online course.
Plan for the next 12 Week Year (most often done in week 12 or 13).
Buffer block, sample agenda, 30 to 60 minutes
Review and respond to email.
Listen to voicemail and respond as needed.
Make necessary outbound calls.
Follow up on to-do list items.
Take quick meetings with staff to answer questions or to plan follow-up.
Organize and fi le work in process and completed items.
Identify any new to-do list items and record.
Instead of increasing your effectiveness, multitasking actually slows you down and increases the chances of mistakes, according to David E. Meyer, Director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan. When you mentally push back a primary task and pick up a new task, you increase the time needed to finish the primary task by 25 percent on average.
Work from a written weekly plan. A written weekly plan that is tied to your 12 week goals keeps you from allocating too much time to the emergent stuff versus the strategic.
The life you are currently living is a result of the choices you’ve made. You can blame the circumstances, your upbringing, your family, the schools you attended, your boss, or the politicians. The fact is, you don ’t control any of that. What you control is how you respond. Being accountable is not easy, and at times it is very unpleasant, but if you are serious about your goals, you must take ownership of your situation.
Taking ownership means that you stop looking outside yourself. Stop letting all those things keep you from living the life you desire, the life you are capable of.
Resolve right now to never again let excuses get in the way of you achieving your goals.
Actions to create greater accountability in your life:
Resolve never to be the victim again. Accountability is first a mind-set, then an action. To live your vision, take ownership of your thinking, actions, and results.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself . Feeling sorry for yourself produces nothing but self-pity and, if you do enough of it, depression.
Be willing to take different actions. If you want different results, then you need to be willing to do things differently and do different things. Taking action will not only change your outcomes; it will also change your attitude.
Associate with “Accountables.” “He who walks with the wise grows wise.” Who you associate with matters. Stay away from victims and excuse makers. Treat that mind-set like a deadly, contagious disease. Nurture relationships with people who are accountable.
Accountability starts with clear expectations. Knowing what is expected is fundamental to individual and organizational accountability. As an individual you need to be very specific with regard to the results you’re targeting and how you will measure success.
Accountability is not consequences; it’s ownership.
“Truth is the only safe ground to stand on.” - Elizabeth Cady
When you take full ownership, there is no room for anything less than honest candor with yourself and with others.
To be effective you will want to focus on the things that you can control. You don ’t control the circumstances or others. The only things you control are your thinking and your actions. Spend your energy on the things you control. Work on keeping your thinking and your actions productive.
The four keys to successful commitments: 1. Burning desire; 2. Clear actions; 3. Count the costs; and 4. Act on commitments, not feelings.
Sometimes it’s the tiniest of commitments that have the biggest impact when we follow through with them.
For a goal, identify the keystone action, and then list the commitment costs or the sacrifices you'll make to take that action.
People would rather you say no than break a promise.
It feels so much better to say yes, than no, but while saying no may disappoint in the moment, it is so much better in the long run than being overcommitted and not delivering on your promises. It ’s okay to say no; it really is.
Even if you miss a commitment, don't give up. Get right back on the horse.
With personal commitments two or three is usually plenty, and in some cases committing to one thing is even better. With your promises to others, know that most people would rather hear you say no than say yes and not deliver.
If you think that your plan to reach multiple goals actually is manageable, then you are more likely to execute it and planning becomes beneficial for multiple goals as well.
The way you think about your plan, affects your ability to execute.
You don ’t have to be perfect; just be consistent and persistent.
“I don’t think there is any other quality so essential to success as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.”—John D. Rockefeller
The key to execution is to consistently apply the system .
Make a commitment to finish strong: Finish the 12 weeks strong! Finish the week strong! Finish the day strong! Be great!
You don ’t control the outcomes, so focus on the process.
Thomas Edison said that if we only did what we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
Stop waiting for things to be just right and start where you stand.
Never settle for anything less than what you are capable of.