A Personal Version of the 12 Week Year
At the end of last year, on a friend’s suggestion, I read The 12 Week Year. As someone who already tries to live rather seasonally and cyclically, the basic idea of making plans in 12 week chunks appealed to me.
I’m going to give you a super short version of what I took away from The 12 Week Year. I do want to point out… I’m not following it very well! I’ve very much made it my own and combined it with some other concepts.
Okay. The 12 Week Year is based mostly on business principles. You may have heard before that businesses make most of their profits in the 4th quarter of the year. The authors assert that part of the reason is that a year is just too darn long to stick with the same goals. If you come up with a goal in January that’s not going to be measured until December, you’re unlikely to really get started until October (or November or December…). And then you’ll book it to finish everything in just a few weeks!
With The 12 Week Year, you make your plans for just 12 weeks at a time. The idea is to set goals that you can meet within 12 weeks that will propel you toward bigger goals. But your focus is genuinely on those 12 weeks only. If you accomplish your 12 week goals, will you feel accomplished?
I’m a goal-setter and list-maker. I love to accomplish things and tick them off of a list. And I’m usually going 90 to nothing. Setting goals that can be accomplished within 12 weeks has helped me reign in my neurospicy brain.
Knowing that I have only 12 weeks instills a sense of urgency that is motivating.
Knowing that I can change my goals in 12 weeks provides an opportunity for novelty.
Planning goals that cross only 1-2 seasons means I can adjust them based on the time of year
Focusing on goals across 3 months means I can factor in my menstrual cycle more easily and plan around those downtimes (my ADHD symptoms get a lot worse just before and during my period).
With all these perks in mind, I decided to give it a go. Sort of.
Even though it’s intended to be for individuals and personal life, not just businesses, it did feel like a business book. As into goal setting and lists and self reflection as I am, the amount of effort it seemed like it would take to adhere to their closed system seemed immense. Well beyond the capabilities of my memory and attention span.
And I made it my own.
At the beginning of January, I saw down and wrote out things I’d like to accomplish within the next three months. They’re generally in a few areas: work, health, personal hobbies, and relationships. I unwittingly ended up following the categories suggested in The Happiness Trap, another book I’ve been reading and thoroughly enjoying. Some of them are higher priority, some of them are things that require consistent daily actions, some of them are one-time side quests. I didn’t have a number I was aiming for, I just wrote down what came naturally and then pruned to make it realistic for three months. They also roughly support my theme for the year.
Then, my husband and I had a planning day. We shared our goals so that we would know what the other person was aiming for and could be supportive. After that, we sat down with our calendars and mapped out what we could expect for the next few months. Within that, we decided to designate one weekend each month as a “blackout” weekend where we would purposefully do nothing. We decided to designate one weekend per quarter for a “big date.” And we decided to set aside 1-2 nights each week for what we call “hermit nights.”
On the weekly, I consult my list of goals. The ones that require consistent, daily actions automatically go onto the left side of my planner, repeating every day. Things from my list that don’t have to be daily but need to be focused on at some point during the week are written on the top right side of my planner and then are distributed to the best day. I also use the right side to track things throughout the week: for example, I jot down how long I was on my phone at the end of each day so I can keep an eye on my screen time goal.
In this way, six weeks in, I’m marching toward accomplishing the 9 (!?!) things I set up to do this quarter.
I’d love to hear how you plan your goals (motivations, intentions, whatever!) for the year and how you keep track!
Until next time, stay spicy.
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