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

by Brian P. Moran

The barrier standing between you and the life you are capable of living is a lack of consistent execution.

there are always more ideas than you can effectively implement.

annual planning process.

focus, concentration, and overload on a specific skill or discipline.

focused training regimen that concentrates on one skill at a time for a limited period, usually four to six weeks.

including spiritual, relationships, family, income, lifestyle, health, and community.

amygdala,

great at a few things instead of mediocre at many things.

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.

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.

Scorekeeping is at the heart of competition.

The data is not concerned with effort or intentions; it simply focuses on outcomes.

Measurement drives the execution process.

As the CEO of your own life and business, you need to know the numbers.

Lag indicators—things like income, sales, commission dollars, pounds lost, body fat percentage, overall cholesterol levels—represent the end results that you are striving to achieve.

Lead indicators are the activities that produce the end results—for instance the number of sales calls, or referrals are lead indicators in the sales process.

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.

you don’t know if the plan doesn’t work if you’re not working the plan.

score yourself on the percentage of activities you complete each week.

successfully complete 85 percent of the activities in your weekly plan,

you only need to be 85 percent effective on the top priorities to achieve excellence!

productive tension.

Take time to establish a set of key measures that include lead and lag indicators

Performance Time

strategic blocks, buffer blocks, and breakout blocks.

strategic block is a three-hour block of uninterrupted time that is scheduled into each week.

strategic and money-making activities.

one strategic block per week is sufficient.

Buffer blocks are designed to deal with all of the unplanned and low-value activities—

one 30-minute buffer block a day is sufficient,

while for others, two separate one-hour blocks may be necessary.

effective breakout block is at least three-hours long and spent on things other than work.

Keystone actions:

Act on commitments, not feelings:

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

When does a champion become great?

when an individual chooses to do the things that he knows he needs to do.

what could be different for you if every 12 weeks you focused on a few key areas in your life and made significant improvement.

“What more can I do to get the result?”

commitment capacity

informed pessimism, is characterized by a shift to a negative emotional state. At this point, the benefits don’t seem as real, important, or immediate, and the costs of the change are apparent.

what they felt made our organization unique,

Your vision should be big enough that it makes you feel at least a little bit uncomfortable.

What if ?

What is most important to you physically, spiritually, mentally, relationally, financially, professionally, and personally?

Capacity objectives include such things as pursuing education, hiring staff, updating technology, implementing new systems,

The more specific and measureable your 12 week goals, the easier it will be to write a solid 12 week plan.

each tactic should start with a verb, be a complete sentence, and be executable as written in the week that it is due.

Keep in mind that at its most basic level, planning is just problem solving. Your plan solves the problem of how to close the gap between your results today and your 12 week goal.