The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months

by Brian P. Moran

I agree with Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, that most of us have two lives: the lives we live and the lives we are capable of living.

Execution is the single greatest market differentiator. Great companies and successful individuals execute better than their competition. 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.

“You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.” —Henry Ford

Periodization began as an athletic training technique designed to dramatically improve performance. Its principles are focus, concentration, and overload on a specific skill or discipline. Periodization in sports is a focused training regimen that concentrates on one skill at a time for a limited period, usually four to six weeks. After each four- to six-week period, the athlete then moves to the next skill in sequence. In this way, capacity in each skill is maximized.

You no longer have the luxury of putting off the critical activities, imagining that there is plenty of time left in the year.

In addition, you now experience the anticipation of a new year every 12 weeks.

Every 12 weeks you get a fresh start—a new year! So if you’ve had a tough 12 Week Year you can just shake it off, regroup, and start again.

And just like you do at the end of a calendar year, every 12 weeks you take a break, celebrate, and reload. It might be a three-day weekend or a weeklong vacation; the important thing is that you take time out to reflect, regroup, and reenergize.

Execution invariably requires taking new actions, and new actions are often uncomfortable.

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 that 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.

Without a compelling vision, you will discover there is no reason to go through the pain of change.

Vision is the starting point of all high performance. You create things twice; first mentally, then physically.

If you’re going to create a breakthrough—if you’re going to reach the next level—you will need to move through fear, uncertainty, and discomfort.

This capacity for our brains to change is called neuroplasticity.

The second difference with 12 week planning is that it is more focused. Most annual plans have too many objectives, which is one of the primary reasons execution fails.

Tactics are the daily to-do’s that drive the attainment of your goals. Tactics must be specific, actionable, and include due dates and assigned responsibilities. We’ll have more to say on how to write effective tactics a little later in the application section.

The physical universe will not respond to your desires, no matter how passionate or intense they are. The one thing that moves the universe is action.

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.

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 really benefit from this tool you will need to carry it with you and work from it on a daily basis. Start each day with your weekly plan. Check in with it several times throughout the day. If you’ve scheduled a tactic to be completed that day, don’t go home until it is done. This ensures that the critically important tasks, your plan tactics, are completed each week.

Too often in business we fail to keep score, and without some objective measure, we cannot know for certain if we are being effective. Just as in athletics, measurement drives the business process.

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. While this can be difficult, the sooner we confront reality, the sooner we can shift our actions toward producing more desirable results.

If you are not hitting your goal, you need to know whether it is due to a flaw in plan content or in execution, because there is a big difference in how to handle these two breakdowns. A breakdown in plan content occurs when strategies and tactics are not effective, while a breakdown in execution occurs when you fail to fully implement the plan tactics.

Scorekeeping is not for the faint of heart. There will be times when you don’t execute well and score poorly. People often drop out when they reach this point because they lack the courage to face the reality of their actions. Instead of scoring their performance, they distract themselves with other things that seem important in the moment. With the 12 Week Year there is nowhere to hide. It shines a light on where you are performing and where you are not. All of us, from time to time, will struggle to execute. The 12 Week Year system forces you to confront your lack of execution—and it’s uncomfortable, but it is the very thing that is required if you’re going to perform at your best. We call this discomfort productive tension.

Productive tension is the uncomfortable feeling you get when you’re not doing the things you know you need to do.

Benjamin Franklin said, “If we take care of the minutes, the years will take care of themselves.”

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.

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.

We all know intuitively that an ability to keep commitments is fundamental to effective execution and high performance, but many of us fall short of our commitments on a regular basis. It seems that when things get difficult, we find reasons why we can’t keep our promises and we shift our focus to other activities. Often our interest wanes when things get tough. It is important to understand that there is a difference between interest and commitment: When you’re interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstances permit, but when you’re committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results.

1. Strong desire: In order to fully commit to something, you need a clear and personally compelling reason.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. Act on commitments, not feelings: There will be times when you won’t feel like doing the critical activities.

Learning to do the things you need to do, regardless of how you feel, is a core discipline for success.

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.

Each and every one of us has the God-given ability to be great. What makes a champion is the discipline to do the extra things even when—especially when—you don’t feel like it.

Those eight elements are: Vision Planning Process Control Measurement Time Use Accountability

Commitment Greatness in the Moment

The 12 Week Year builds on a foundation of three principles that in the end determine an individual’s effectiveness and success. These principles are: 1. Accountability 2. Commitment 3. Greatness in the Moment

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 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.

Greatness in the Moment:

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.

These five disciplines are:

Vision 2. Planning 3. Process Control 4. Measurement 5. Time Use