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

by Brian P. Moran

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.

Most people know how to get back in shape—eat better, exercise more—they just don’t do it. It’s not a knowledge problem; it’s an execution problem.

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

We mistakenly believe that there is a lot of time left in the year, and we act accordingly. We lack a sense of urgency, not realizing that every week is important, every day is important, every moment is important. Ultimately, effective execution happens daily and weekly!

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.

The 12 Week Year defines what’s important for you to do today so that your long-term objectives can be attained.

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.

When you focus on changing your actions, you experience incremental improvements; however, when your thinking shifts—everything changes.

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.

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. The personal vision creates the foundation for an emotional link to your business and career objectives so that there is a strong alignment between what you pursue in your business and the life you desire to live.

Your business vision is most powerful when it is developed in light of your personal vision. The reason so many people fail to follow through when things become difficult is due to this lack of connection with their personal lives. Your business objectives are not the end in themselves, but the means to an end. Too often, managers and associates plan for business success but fail to connect with the real power source that will enable them to achieve that success. In essence, the personal vision is the reason why we work in the first place.

Working from a plan has three distinct benefits: 1. It reduces mistakes. 2. It saves time. 3. It provides focus.

In 12 week planning, you identify the top one to three things that will have the greatest impact, and pursue those with intensity.

Once you have established your 12 week goals, tactics will then need to be determined. The easiest way to do this is to break your 12 week goal down to its individual parts. For example, if your 12 week goal is to earn $10,000 and lose 10 pounds, you should write tactics for your income goal and your weight loss goal separately. Tactics are the daily to-do’s that drive the attainment of your goals.

www.12weekyear.com/gettingstarted.

To be truly effective, your daily activity must align with your long-term vision, strategies, and tactics.

Vision also provides the motivation to act, but vision without action is just a dream. It is the consistent action that turns a dream into reality.

Consistent action on the critical tasks needed to reach your goal is the key to getting what you want in life.

“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.

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 most important lead indicator you have is a measure of your execution. Ultimately, you have greater control over your actions than over your results. Your results are created by your actions. An execution measure indicates whether you did the things you said were most important to achieving your goals.

The best way to measure your execution is to work from a weekly plan (based upon your 12 Week Plan) and evaluate the percentage of tactics completed.

For the 12 Week Year we’ve developed a tool called the Weekly Scorecard. If you’ve followed the process thus far, you understand that the weekly plan represents the critical activities that you need to accomplish each week to achieve your overall goals. The weekly scorecard then provides an objective measure of how well you executed your weekly plan. With the weekly scorecard you measure execution, not results. You score yourself on the percentage of activities you complete each week.

We have found that if you successfully complete 85 percent of the activities in your weekly plan, then you will most likely achieve your objectives. Remember that your plan contains the top priorities that will add the most value and have the greatest impact.

Productive tension is the uncomfortable feeling you get when you’re not doing the things you know you need to do. Our natural inclination when confronted with discomfort is to resolve it.

“It’s not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?” —Henry David Thoreau

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

block out regular time each week dedicated to your strategically important tasks. We call this Performance Time and find that it is the best approach to effectively allocating time that we have ever encountered. It utilizes a simple time-blocking system to regain control of your day and maximize your effectiveness.

There are three primary components of performance time: strategic blocks, buffer blocks, and breakout 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. Strategic blocks concentrate your intellect and creativity to produce breakthrough results. You will likely be astounded by the quantity and quality of the work you produce. For most people, one strategic block per week is sufficient.

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.

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.

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.

Performance time applies to more than just strategic, buffer, and breakout blocks. 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.

For more on time blocking join the 12 Week Year community at www.12weekyear.com/gettingstarted. It’s free!

Accountability is not consequences, but ownership. It is a character trait, a life stance, a willingness to own your actions and results regardless of the circumstances

It’s easy to become a victim to outside circumstances, spending time and energy hoping and imagining what our lives would be like if the world around us were different, believing that these are the keys to improving our results. The truth is you don’t control any of these things. The only things you control are your thinking and your actions.

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. 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.

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 today’s world, many of us have become spectators rather than participants. We must remember that it’s what we do that counts. 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. 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.

4. 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.

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.

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.

In fact, there are eight elements that we believe are fundamental to high performance in any endeavor. 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

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.

In a sense, commitment is accountability projected into the future. It is ownership of a future action or result. Building your commitment capacity has a dramatic effect on your personal and business results.

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.