The twelve-week year for one person
by Andreas Tissen · · updated
Annual goals fail for a reason that has nothing to do with ambition. In a twelve-month plan almost everything can wait until later. In February, December is somebody else's problem. By September the goal has been quietly renegotiated twice and nobody remembers the original.
The twelve-week year fixes this with one move: a quarter IS the year. Twelve weeks of plan, one week to close out and start again. There is no later. Week eleven is visible from week one.
The week number is the method
Write the week number into the title, where you cannot avoid it. "Week 6 of 12" is a different sentence from "Q3 goals", and the whole method rests on that difference, because six weeks left is a fact you feel and a quarter is just a season.
Under it, three lines. No more.
- This week, as things you can finish. Not as areas you will work on.
- Last week, ticked, so progress is visible instead of remembered.
- Behind, named with the week it slipped in. "The store accounts, week 4, still open" is hard to reread every Monday without deciding something, and that discomfort is the point of naming the week.
Score the week, not the feeling
One number is worth keeping: how many things you planned on Monday against how many you finished by Friday. Five of six is 83%.
Below about 85% consistently, the honest reading is that the plan was too big. You were not lazy. The plan was too big. That interpretation is what makes the score usable instead of punishing. People who skip it end up feeling bad about a number and changing nothing.
Two or three weeks of over-planning in a row is the most valuable thing you can learn from this method. You only get it if you write both numbers down. Both of them, every week.
Why an outline rather than a planning app
Because the plan and the work are the same bullets. This week's items are the real projects, mirrored or moved into the week. There is no summary to keep in step. When the work moves, the plan has moved.
And the closing week is a scroll. Twelve dated week-bullets, one branch, one screen. What did I actually do this quarter? Most people answer that from memory and by digging through an old calendar.
Start at the real week
Open the template, press "Show in my Pando", and set the title to the week you are actually in. If your quarter started six weeks ago, write "week 6 of 12". Then read it twice.