The 12 Week Year by Brian P Moran

The 12 Week Year by Brian P Moran

Yet another book recommended by the good people over at the Miracle Morning Community on Facebook.  This is a productivity book aimed at business people but applicable to anyone who wants to get more done.

The premise is simple - a year is too long to wait to achieve a goal.  By giving ourselves goals for the year we sabotage them before we even start.  There are several reasons why a year is too long and this book sets out to overcome them by getting you to work to the much shorter timescale of 12 weeks.  The author argues that using this system you should be able to achieve your yearly goals in 3 months. 

What I like about this book is that it works well with the principles set out in The One Thing and it is also very process orientated rather than results orientated.  I think this message is starting to sink in with me as it seems to have been the theme of quite a few of the books and blogs I have read lately.  Your goal might be to 'get fit' or 'be more organised' but those are results orientated goals and not very specific at that.  How do you now when you've got there? What happens when you do get there?  Is that the end of the goal - tick it off and find new one? By focusing on the process rather than the end result, you build daily the little habits which get you to the end result and beyond.  For me, the main goal of being fit and healthy and, especially, pain-free doesn't help much.  Whereas the process goals of eat clean, don't drink and do my fifteen minute exercise routine every morning, get me to that result.  Similarly my big goal of reading 80 books in a year can only be reached by reading daily and blogging twice a week - I can't have a burst of activity and energy as my deadline draws near, it will be too late then. 

The 12 Week Year is based on the idea that a deadline encourages effort and so setting a deadline for 12 weeks instead of 12 months ensures that effort gets distributed more evenly over the year. 

I am enjoying this book - nearly finished it - and am going to use it to get started on some of the bigger projects I've been dithering about such as getting the application proposal for a doctorate completed and doing the Primal Blueprint Expert Certification course and setting up a Primal Wellbeing Coaching website.

Let's see how that goes!