11 things I learned from "The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months" by Brian P. Moran
I heard about this book from NotePD. Thanks! The 12-week year is a system that you commit to get things done. You can't bolt it on to other things you are doing.
- Burning desire
- Clear actions
- Count the costs
- Act on commitments, not feelings.
1. Annual thinking is too long a timeframe
You tend to rush at the end of the year. 12-week plans are easier to predict the outcomes.
2. Use the shorter timeframes to focus on one element of what you are trying to accomplish for the year in a single 12 week time frame.
From the 12 weeks, you can break it down into 3-month chapters and the week level.
3. You need a compelling future vision to look forward to. It should be bigger than your present.
This helps guide each of your 12-week "sprints." "Vision is the starting point of all high performance. You create things twice; first mentally, then physically. The biggest barrier to high performance is not the physical manifestation but the mental creation." "you must let your mind expand to imagine and even embrace the possibilities that often get pushed aside in our daily lives as being not immediate enough to command our attention, impractical, or too audacious to even consider, let alone pursue"
4. By compressing a "month" into a week there are fewer ways for things to go off the rails.
5. If you do 4 12 week Years in a single year, even if you mess up 2 of them you will still have completed 2 "years" worth of activity.
6. "planning is some of the most productive time you can have."
7. "Your current actions are creating your future."
8. After you have identified something that you want, you need to figure out what actions you need to take to get there.
9. It is important to acknowledge the cost in what you do.
Nothing is free. Will you be giving up watching TV? Cookies? Time with your family? If you think about these costs and acknowledge them at first, you can make conscious decisions and understand that you are sacrificing certain things to be able to accomplish other things.
10. Greatness is achieved before it shows results or gets recognized.
The author points out that somebody like LeBron James became great before becoming known for greatness. In other words, he could play well before he played well for so many seasons to get noticed, and break records. The greatness occurs in the process that is only proven by the results. He refers to these as leading indicators and lag indicators. A better example is that if you aim to lose 10 pounds, the weight loss is a lag indicator because it happens at the end. Lead indicators will be things like counting calories or increasing your exercise.
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