PDF Summary:The 12 Week Year, by Brian P. Moran

We all have things we want to accomplish in life, and we all want to be a success in our professional endeavors. We set annual goals, but after a year, we’re no closer to our goals than before. There’s too much time in a year to focus properly on the necessary tasks, and there are other responsibilities and distractions that hinder our productivity. The 12 Week Year will teach you how to remove those barriers to success. When you work toward goals 12 weeks at a time, you’re better able to see the steps required to achieve them and feel a greater sense of urgency to accomplish them. The 12-week year will help you succeed at achieving your dreams and grow your business to great heights.

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An Ideal Weekly Plan

After you determine the steps required to achieve your 12-week goal, break them down into weekly goals.

Your weekly plan should clearly dictate which tasks are required daily to generate the necessary results and foundation for further progress. Take time at the beginning of each week to go over the plan, and after one week, use this time to review the progress made the week before. With a strategic schedule, you’ll never question what you should be doing, and you’ll have a sense of urgency to perform the necessary tasks because of consistent deadlines.

Peer Support

Form a peer-support group to motivate you and keep you accountable. When you know your work will be evaluated by others, you’re more likely to work harder to produce high-quality results.

Discipline 4: Measure Your Progress

You can’t know if you’re progressing toward your goal if you don’t evaluate your progress along the way. The beauty of the 12-week plan is that you don’t have to wait until the end of the year to check your progress. You’ll have this information after three months to either improve upon or build on during the next 12-week period. Furthermore, you’ll be able to see how far along in your process you are and make any necessary adjustments.

Track your performance by tallying the number of tasks you’ve successfully accomplished each week. Score your progress using two different measures: lag and lead indicators.

Lag indicators are the end results of your actions, or your main goal for the 12 weeks. Lead indicators are the actions taken to reach that goal. For instance, if you set a goal to increase your organization's income by 12%, your percentage increases experienced each week are your lag indicators. The lead indicators for your 12% increase would be more sales calls, increased product development, or increased marketing tactics.

Both indicators help you measure how well you’re working toward your goal. If you’re not on track, you have the data needed to determine whether the problem is with the process or the execution. The following example helps clarify this process:

• To increase your company’s profits by 12%, you set weekly goals for a 1% increase. But after three weeks, your profits have only increased 2%. The lag indicator is off, so now you turn to the lead indicators. You add up the accomplished tasks and receive a score of 85% achievement. This is a high percentage of productivity, so your actions are not the problem. Now you know that you may need to set higher goals and can adjust your plans to increase production expectations.
• In contrast, if you score 50% achievement, you know you aren’t executing to the level necessary for goal achievement. With this knowledge, you can determine if the tasks for each week are realistic for you or whether you just need to focus more and work harder.

Without proper measures, you can’t get the feedback required to optimize your efforts. Don’t look at low scores as failures, but rather markers pointing to a need for improvement.

Discipline 5: Manage Your Time Effectively

The world is full of distractions that steal your focus from high-priority tasks. In fact, studies show that most workers lose 11 hours of productivity a week because of the time it takes to refocus after bouncing back and forth between work and distractions.

There are three blocks of time you should schedule into your weekly plan to help you stay focused: strategic, buffer, and breakout blocks.

The Strategic Block

The strategic block is one three-hour chunk of time per week dedicated to your 12-week plan. During this block, you commit to only working on priority tasks. Spend a few minutes reflecting on your vision to help sharpen your focus, and spend another few minutes reviewing your plan and progress data to see how you’re doing. The rest of the time should be put toward the necessary daily tasks to reach your weekly goal.

The Buffer Block

The buffer block is a time to work on the miscellaneous activities that disrupt your workflow. When you group these activities into one chunk of time, you reduce the frustration of constant interruptions and the time wasted when you perform these tasks at random moments. Check emails, answer phone calls, meet with employees, read the news, and respond to communications for 30 minutes to one hour once or twice a day depending on the nature of the activities.

The Breakout Block

The breakout block is a three-hour period of rest to allow your mind and spirit to rejuvenate. Rest is essential for maintaining a strong focus when you’re working. If you don’t recuperate, you’ll burn out and give up on your plan. At first, start with one breakout block a month until you’re confident you have a strong work ethic regarding your 12-week plan. After that, schedule these weekly. Take a hike, watch TV, spend time with friends and family, or engage in other activities that relax you so you can come back to work energized and focused.

The Model Week

Your model week is an elaboration of your weekly plans of attack. At the beginning of each week, after your reflection, peer-support meeting, and measurement analyses, write down everything you have to accomplish in your work and personal life that week. Then, add those activities to your weekly calendar.

First, schedule your strategic block on a day you know you’ll have the time to focus for three hours. Then, schedule your buffer blocks each day. If you are including a breakout block that week, pencil that in. Finally, schedule the rest of your activities, including the 12-week plan activities, for each of the seven days.

Make planning your model week a routine. You’ll be more organized and focused for success if you intentionally manage your time on a weekly basis.

Principle 1: Be Accountable

Now that you know the five ways to reach your goals, let’s look at three principles to help you stay focused. Accountability is your recognition that you control your future by making the right choices. But too often, people make excuses or blame circumstances for their failure to accomplish their goals. Stop looking outward for motivation and validation and take ownership of your fate.

Here are four ways to build more accountability in your life:

• Stop being a victim. When you notice you’re making excuses or whining about how unfair life is, stop and adjust your thinking. Focus on what you can control, and put your energy into those activities.
• Don’t complain. Complaints can lead to despair, and despair can lead to depression. Think positive thoughts to lead a positive life.
• Change your behavior. If you aren’t getting the results you want, you can’t keep doing the same thing. Be willing to do different things to get different results.
• Engage with positive people. If you surround yourself with victims, you’ll be infected by their negativity. Seek out others who are accountable and on journeys of discovery.

Principle 2: Follow Through on Commitments

The most important aspect of exceptional execution is a commitment to execute. Accountability is the ownership of your actions, and commitment is a promise to perform those actions. When you commit and follow through, you not only gain discipline, confidence, and self-respect but also trust in your discipline, which breeds willpower.

You can develop a strong sense of commitment if you develop the following components:

• A strong desire. You must want something badly enough to force you to act even when you’re afraid, frustrated, or tired. This aspect of commitment is why an emotional connection with your compelling vision is so important.
• Keystone actions. There may be many ways to reach your goals, but only one or two are the best actions to take at certain times. When you get clear on what those keystone actions are, you’re more likely to follow through on performing them.
• Knowledge of the costs. Commitment will require sacrifice to follow through, and knowing the sacrifices ahead of time will help you manage them when they come up.
• An off switch for emotions. True commitment is hard work, and it will challenge your stamina and discipline. Find a way to shut down your negative feelings so you can maintain your motivation and progress.

Types of Commitment

Promises are either explicit or implicit. Explicit promises are those you’re aware of, such as promises made to yourself or verbalized to others. Implicit promises are assumed behaviors based on types of relationships: a partner’s fidelity, a parent’s love, or a boss’s support and leadership. When you lose trust in someone, or vice versa, it’s because either an explicit or implicit promise was broken.

The problem is that each promise comes with two different kinds of intentions. The stated intention is the verbalized commitment you make. You’re aware of your intention to follow through, or else you wouldn’t have made the promise. But below the surface are hidden intentions, or the costs related to your stated intention. Subconsciously, you know what following though will cause you to lose, and you unknowingly fight against your best intentions.

There are a few things you can do to decrease the power of these hidden intentions:

• Make your word count. When you give your word, or make an explicit commitment, your integrity is on the line. Put stock in your word and commit to always maintaining a high level of integrity in your actions.
• Weigh the costs before committing. Consider the related sacrifices before you make promises so you can determine whether you’re actually able or willing to follow through.
• Make a commitment to commit. You must push through discomfort or excuses that hinder your actions. Don’t break your promise to keep your promises.

Principle 3: Be Great in the Moment

To create a better work-life balance, you tend to multitask to engage with more activities. But when you engage with everything, you’re really engaging with nothing. Accept that you can’t do it all, and learn to intentionally imbalance your energy so the most important tasks are being completed.

Strive for Greatness

Success is not a destination but how you work through the journey to get to the destination. You become great the moment you prioritize what’s important to create the life you want. Let certain responsibilities go and put your energy into the tasks that have a real impact on your life.

The small steps you make toward your goal in the moment will combine to create your magnificent vision. The end result is merely a manifestation of your greatness to date.

The First 12 Weeks

Your first 12-week period is the most important one because it will show you what you’re made of and teach you how to be more successful in the future. You’ll experience your first encounters with emotional resistance, impatience for results, confused or overloaded goals or plans, and the pull of your familiar life.

But if you can overcome these obstacles, you’ll have more confidence to continue working toward your goal and reaching it. And you’ll also have your progress data to help you revise your next 12 weeks for greater success.

Your first 12 weeks will unfold in the following way:

• Weeks 1-4: You build the habit of following your plan in these weeks. Stay focused on the disciplines and principles of the 12-week plan to keep you motivated for optimal execution. How you move through these weeks will determine how you move through the remaining eight.
• Weeks 5-8: The novelty of the plan will have worn off, but the deadline is still weeks away. You’ll lack urgency in your actions and be more vulnerable to distractions. Fortify your willpower during these weeks and evaluate your measures to make any necessary adjustments that allow you to finish strong.
• Weeks 9-12: You’ll start to see some of the benefits of your hard work at this point. You might not be exactly where you want to be, but if you’ve been scoring 85% or higher during your weeks, you’re close and have the foundation for how to plan your next 12 weeks.