The fact is, every week counts! Every day counts! Every moment counts! We need to be conscious of the reality that execution happens daily and weekly, not monthly and quarterly.

☕Stop thinking in terms of a year; instead focus on shorter time frames.

“There’s nothing like a deadline to get you motivated.”

💭”We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle

Effective execution does not happen monthly, quarterly, or semi-annually; it happens daily, ultimately moment by moment.

And just like you do at the end of a calendar year, every 12 weeks you take a break, celebrate, and reload. It might a three-day weekend or a weeklong vacation; the important thing is that you take time out to reflect, regroup, and reenergize.

💎The secret to living your life to its potential is to value the important stuff above your own comfort.

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.
Think about what you truly want to achieve.

Vision is the starting point of all high performance.

You must be clear on what it is you want to create.

Begin with your personal vision, what you want your life to look like in the future.

What your business needs to look like in order to align with and enable your personal vision.

It is your personal vision that creates an emotional connection to the daily actions that need to take place in your business.

A compelling personal vision creates passion.
⇒Think about something that you are passionate about, and you will always find a clear vision behind it.

The personal vision should define the life you want to live in all areas, including spiritual, relationships, family, income, lifestyle, health, and community.

When the task seems too difficult or unpleasant, you can reconnect with your personal objections and vision. It is this emotional connection that will provide you with the inner strength to forge ahead in spite of any difficulties, thus enabling you to achieve your dreams and desires.

Your brain has the ability to change and develop physiologically, and it does so based on how you use it.

It is so important to construct plans that are not only numbers-based, but also identify specific, critical activity.

“The greatest predictor of your future are your daily actions.”

💡To use your weekly plan effectively, you will need to spend the first 15~20 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.

Visit the website at (www.12weekyear.com) to see a sample of a weekly plan.

Measurement builds self-esteem and confidence because it documents progress and achievement.

Can you imagine the CEO of a large corporation not knowing the numbers? It’s no different for you or me. As the CEO of your own life and business, you need to know the numbers.

If you are executing at a high level and the results you want or not coming, then it’s time to go back and adjust the plan.

The best way to measure your execution is to work from a weekly plan and evaluate the percentage of tactics completed: Weekly Scorecard.
The weekly scorecard you measure execution, not results. You score yourself on the percentage of activities you complete each week.

Strive for excellence, not perfection.

Even with the weekly score of 65~70% you will do well if you stay in the game. You won’t accomplish what you are capable of, but you will do well.

🔑Your plan must contain 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.

It’s important to remember that the process is not about being perfect, but rather about getting better and better.

Everything you want to accomplish in life requires an investment of your time.

To realize your potential, you must learn to be more mindful about how you spend your time.

Intentionality is your secret weapon in your war on mediocrity.

💭”If we take care of the minutes, the years will take care of themselves.” – Benjamin Franklin

Block our regular time each week dedicated to your strategically important tasks.

Performance Time is the best approach to effectively allocating time that we have ever encountered.

“If you are not in control of your time, you are not in control of your results.”

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.

The concept of an ideal week is to plan on paper all the critical tasks that occur in a typical week and organize them so you can be most productive.
If you can’t fit all the things you do on paper, there is no way you will get them done in reality.

Consider when you tend to be at your best. Are you a morning person or are you better in the afternoon or evening? Schedule your most important activities during your prime time.

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.

The fact is that there are no have-tos. Everything we do in life is a choice.

When you understand that true accountability is about choice and taking ownership of your choices, everything changes.

The only person who can hold you accountable for anything is you, and to be successful you must develop the mental honesty and courage to own your thinking, actions, and results.

To be truly great at what we do, we have to become better at keeping our promises.

A commitment is your personal promise. Keeping your promise to others builds trust and strong relationships, and keeping promises to yourself builds character, esteem, and success.

💭”Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.” – Peter Drucker

4 keys to successful commitments:

Our commitments ultimately shape our lives. They support sound marriages, create lasting relationships, drive our results, and help build our character.

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.

Life balance is not about equal time in each area; life balance is more about intentional imbalance. ⇔ Work-life balance does not exist.

The 8 fundamental elements to high performance in any endeavor:

3 principles that determine an individual’s effectiveness and success:

5 execution disciplines:

The first step to creating breakthrough with the 12 week year is to craft a great vision for yourself.

The most powerful visions address and align your personal aspirations with your professional dreams.

3 time horizons to focus your vision on:

What is most important to you physically, spiritually, mentally, relationally, financially, professionally, and personally?
How much time freedom do you want?
What income do you desire?

Take the items from your page that you connect with emotionally and construct a vision for your life 5, 10, 15 years into the future.

What do you want to create over the next 3 years?

Questions That Uncover the Degree of Ownership:

When creating the team vision, you will want to apply many of the same dynamics used in creating your personal visions.

To increase your odds of success, one of the most powerful things you can do is to create, and work from, a written plan.

The value of each moment is brought into sharp focus when there are only 12 weeks in your entire year.

If your goal is not specific or measurable, the plan that you write will also be vague. The more specific and measurable your 12 week goals, the easier it will be to write a solid 12 week plan.

💡Many 12 week efforts are comprised of 2~3 goals.

5 criteria for writing goals and tactics:

For each of your goals

🔑If you take time to plan before engaging with a complex task, you reduce the overall time required to complete the task by as much as 20%.

A few things as a manager to help your team get on the 12 Week Year :

Joint goals and plans:

There are two last bits of advice when planning for teams:

Weekly plans is not something that you create each week based on what happens to be urgent at the time.
It is populated with tactics from the 12 week plan that are due that particular week.

Weekly Accountability Meeting(WAM) is not about trying to hold each other accountable, but rather fostering individual accountability to consistently execute your plan.

Assign each staff member an area of interest, and create an action plan to grow in that area.

💡Your probability of success greatly increases when you meet regularly with a small group of peers.

Do they have a plan each week?
Are they scoring each week?
Are they actively participating in a WAM?

In general, the more frequent a measure is, the more useful it is. For example, quarterly measures are typically better than annual.

Strategic Blocks: 3 hours in length and should be scheduled early in your week so that if one gets interrupted or cancelled, you have time to reschedule it.

Buffer Blocks: 30-60 minutes in length, scheduled 1-2 times per day.

Breakout Blocks: 3 hours in length designed to prevent burnout and create more free time. Should be scheduled once a week.

Sample strategic blocks agenda:

Sample buffer blocks agenda:

If you frequently defer the strategic work to accomplish the urgent, lower-value activities, you will never accomplish great things.

☕The future you are going to live is the one you are creating right now at this very moment.

Accountability allows you to gain control of your life, to shape your destiny, and to fulfill your potential.
→In its purest form, accountability is simply taking ownership of one’s actions and results.
→The fact of the matter is that successful people are accountable.

Once we accept that our actions have an impact on the outcome then, and only then, are we truly empowered to create the results we desire.
⇒When we acknowledge our accountability, our focus shifts from defending our actions to learning from them.
⇒Failures simply become feedback in the ongoing process of becoming excellent.

4 things to foster greater accountability:

Accountability cannot be imposed, demanded, or coerced.

Create the space for your people to own it.

How to create accountability:

Commitment: The state of being bound emotionally or intellectually to some course of action.

Commitment exercise:

One of the recommended actions is that you review your vision for at least a few minutes each day.

If you think that your plan to reach multiple goals actually is manageable, then you are more likely to execute it and planning becomes beneficial for multiple goals as well.

2 ways to “shrink” change:

Your current actions are creating your current results.

As long as you see the solution to your greatness as being outside of you, you will remain powerless to change.

💎Personal accountability-ownership of your vision, goals, and plan-is the single most important thing you can do to become great.

Set your ego aside and acknowledge that someone else might know some things that you don’t, and they might be able to help you get better.

The key is to fully engage in the first 12 weeks.
You will need more intentionality regarding how you think and act each day and week.

Your first 12 week year is unique.
In fact, it’s helpful to frame it in 3~4 week periods.

☕Studies have shown that when you are introduced to a new concept or habit, the sooner and more often you act on it, the more likely it is that you will incorporate it into your daily routine.

The first 4 weeks are critical. These first weeks are all about getting a fast start toward your goal, and establishing the 12 week year as your execution system. In your first 4 weeks, use the weekly routine to establish some new habits.
⇒A good start makes the end goal more attainable.

Whether you are on track to hit your 12 week goal or not, by finishing strong you will create positive results and set yourself up for the next 12 week as well.

The 13th week is a chance to have an extra week of effort, if you need it to hit your goals.

One important thing that you can do is to recognize progress early and often. Do this both individually and with the team. Create a sense of progress and momentum each week and be sure to recognize process change.
⇒You don’t control the outcome; so focus on the process.

One of the qualities of a leader is that they are always striving to get better, and to help their team get better.