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January 14 - January 24, 2021
You’ve no doubt heard the saying knowledge is power. I disagree. Knowledge is only powerful if you use it, if you act on it. People spend lifetimes acquiring knowledge, but to what purpose?
The great thing about having a 12 Week Year is that the deadline is always near enough that you never lose sight of it. It provides a time horizon that is long enough to get things done, yet short enough to create a sense of urgency and a bias for action.
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.
Most people focus primarily on their business or career, but business is just part of life, and it is actually your life vision that gives traction and relevance to your business.
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. It is your personal vision that keeps you in the game when things become difficult.
Researchers have found that a portion of the brain, the amygdala, reacts negatively when we are facing uncertainty and risk. This response is quite helpful in avoiding danger and staying alive. Unfortunately, when we imagine the future as being vastly different from today, we experience uncertainty because we don’t know how to create and maintain the future we are imagining. When this happens the amygdala kicks in. That’s when the part of our brain that avoids risk gets in our way. It seeks to keep us out of uncertain and risky situations.
You have the ability to strengthen and develop your brain by thinking about a compelling future for yourself, by regularly and repeatedly thinking about an inspiring vision where you emotionally connect with the life you desire.
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.
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 weekly plan is not a glorified to-do list; rather it reflects the critical strategic activity from your 12 week plan that needs to take place this week in order for you to achieve your goals.
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.
Unlike results, which can lag weeks, months, and in some cases years behind your actions, an execution measure provides more immediate feedback, which allows you to make game-time adjustments much faster. An execution measure is important for another reason as well. 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.
Measurement drives the process. Effective scorekeeping is essential if you want to execute well and perform at your best. Take time to establish a set of key measures that include lead and lag indicators and, most importantly, be sure to score your execution. Have the courage to measure your performance!
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.
You are most effective when you are mentally where you are physically—when you are present in the moment.
You can’t change the past or act in the future. The current moment—the eternal right now—is all you have. Right now, you can affect what happens to you for the rest of your life. The future is created now, our dreams are achieved in the moment.
Results are not the attainment of greatness, but simply confirmation of it. You become great long before the results show it.
Life balance is not about equal time in each area; life balance is more about intentional imbalance.
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.
Keep in mind that the weekly plan is a derivative of your 12 week plan. It is not something that you create each week based on what happens to be urgent at the time. On the contrary, the weekly plan is populated with the tactics from the 12 week plan that are due that particular week.
The weekly plan does not contain everything you do in your job, just the strategic items from your 12 week plan.
measurement is cold and unsympathetic and at times even harsh. It discounts effort and has no regard for interruptions or distractions, or any other excuse you can muster. But in the end measurement is helpful and necessary. Without measurement there is no way for you to know, unequivocally if you are making progress. Without measurement there is no way for you to know what adjustments would be productive.
Some of your choices may make it seem like you are staying busy when in reality you are choosing to avoid your more important, and often more difficult activity. This tendency shows up everywhere in our lives and includes things like following up on emails and messages rather that tackling the more difficult, but higher-payoff activities like making sales calls, exercising, and confronting difficult relationship problems.
It’s okay to be disappointed and sad when things don’t go your way, but don’t let that linger and turn into self-pity.
if you want something you don’t currently have, you need to do something you’re not currently doing.
Delayed gratification is the productive thought. This is not a concept that most people seem interested in, yet it remains the straightest line to your goals.
Creation or refinement of your vision, goal, and plan is something that happens before each 12 Week Year begins.
Install the weekly routine and make these three steps your new habits. 1. Plan your week 2. Score your week 3. Participate in a Weekly Accountability Meeting (WAM)
