Knocking Out My Goals with the 12 Week Year
TL;DR;
In my last post (read it here), I reviewed one of my favorite books “The 12 Week Year”. This book has provided the best framework I have found for planning and achieving my goals. Many books and systems give a high-level overview of a process but don’t get down into the weeds enough. This book gets down there and gives you the action steps needed to see success. In this post, I’m going to go into detail on how I plan my 12 Week Year, the documents I use, and how I’ve implemented the system.
First, I have planned my 12 Week Year blocks to always start on the first Sunday of the first full week in January. I tend to start a new workout program on that first Monday so that works out nicely. Also, the 12 Week Year plan calls for one full week of planning in between each 12 week segment (the 13th week), so this really creates 4 quarters in your year. My 12 Week Years work out to the following breakdown:
January – March
April – June
July – September
October – December
This year, my 1st 12 Week Year of 2022 started on January 2nd. It will end on March 26th, and then I will have one full week to plan my next one (even though I do keep tracking my tactics during that 13th week).
How I Plan a 12 Week Year
To start my 12 Week Year planning, I select a few of the goals I want to work on and open up OneNote Online. I use OneNote Online (for free) to store all of my notes for everything in my life. I have a tab for my 12 Week Year planning. For each main goal, I create a table that will contain my tactics. In that table, I list each of the tactics I want to complete in order to reach my goal.
In the first section, I enter my goal and then add some details about the goal. I make sure to put down my “why”. Why do I want to reach this goal? Without a why, I know I will fail at my goal. As a very busy employee, mom and wife, if I don’t have a compelling why, I will sit my butt down on the couch instead of doing what I know I should do. During my planning I also list the leads and the lags that I will use as measurements to determine if I’m making progress.
Finally, I will complete a table with the Weekly Tactics I am committed to completing, the date each tactic is due, and in which week in the 12 weeks that I plan to start and end the tactic (as some may not be needed every week). The final column I will complete at the end of the 12 weeks with the date of completion.
For this post, I will use the example of one of my fitness goals. I started running this past summer and I ran my first official 5K race in July. I am hooked and I absolutely love running, so I now have a goal to run an official timed 5K in under 30 minutes. My last 5K was 33 minutes, so I have a little work to do with this goal.
I use OneNote Online to work through these planning exercises. I will complete the above questions, leads, lags, and tactic table for each of my goals along with when I will do these tactics during the 12 weeks. Here is an example of planning my tactics for improving my running:
In the example above, I have added my goal of running an official timed 5K in under 30 minutes. I have added my “why” that I want to keep in mind when the going gets tough. Then I added what I can measure each week (the leads) such as how many miles I’m running a week or the number of times I work out in a week. The measurements I can measure near the end (the lags) are listed and include how long my 3 mile run is taking me at the end of a few weeks and also an estimation of how tired I am feeling at the end of the week.
Then, for each tactic, I complete a due date and the begin and wend weeks. For my running example, I don’t plan to start running outside until the weather warms up a bit and roads are clear of snow and ice, so I set the Begin Week for running to Week 8 and I will do cardio workouts inside for weeks 1 through 8. Maybe one of the tactics can’t be started until another one completes, or maybe I need to do some research before I can start a tactic. These would all be reasons to have different Begin and End Weeks.
This planning helps me to verify that what I have planned to do in those 12 weeks is feasible. It also keeps me focused on that tactics that I need to focus on now and keeps any other tactics out of the way until the week comes where I need to start them.
I complete this process of creating a table and breaking out the tactics for each of the goals I want to work on during that 12 Week Year. Once I have this all laid out, it’s time to start putting the tactics into my tracker for the first week.
In the 12 Week Year, it describes the process of tracking each of your tactics so that you can see how well you are doing with your progress to your goal as you are going and not just at the end. I use an Excel Online spreadsheet (also free) to complete this tracker sheet, but you could also use a Google sheet to do this.
First, I have a row across the top of the spreadsheet that contains the dates of that week. My week runs from Sunday through Saturday. Then, in the first column, I list my goals as headers and then the tactics for the goals below them.
Now for me, I love to see the numbers and the percentages. To do this automatically in my spreadsheet, I use the column to the right of the Saturday column to calculate the percentage of tactics I am completing. If I successfully complete a tactic on a day, I put a 100 in that day’s cell for that tactic.
To calculate my percentage, I add a formula in the last column (to the right of Saturday) that sums up the total for that tactic and divides by the number I should have completed.
In the running example, let’s say my tactic was to complete a cardio workout 3 days a week. My formula in the end column would be SUM(week)/300. Each day I run, I would put a 100 in that row for that day. In the example of the week above, I only did cardio 2 times that week. The formula is then 200/300 = .6666. This is formatted to display as a percent in the spreadsheet, so you can see I had a 66.67% for that tactic.
Each row has a formula that sums and divides by the number of times that tactic should be completed during the week. This way I can see how each tactic is performing. Then at the bottom right corner, I have an average percentage of completion for that whole week so that I can track how I am doing. In the example above, I had a 50% for that week.
Every Sunday, I complete my weekly review that is recommended in the book. During this review, I make sure I have all of my tactics accounted for and check my percentages. Then I will compare my average percentages to previous weeks to see how I am doing on my goal progress. The book suggests that if you are hitting your tactics over 80% of the time each week, you will reach your goals. This is my aim, but I definitely don’t hit this weekly. My highest weekly percent was 94.4%, but I don’t get near that often.
That’s it! That is my complete process for how I track my progress to my goals. Seeing those percentages each week is very motivating. Sometimes I will look at my spreadsheet when I’m tired and just want to be lazy on the couch, and I will see that there is a tactic that I need to complete that day or I will miss that “100”, and it motivates me to get that task done.
The 12 Week Year is a great goal setting system to help you work from starting the goal generating process all the way through to how to track your success. If you’d like to start your own tracking, I have create a few printables for you to use:
12 Week Year Planning Template
12 Week Year Tactic Tracker Spreadsheet
I would love to hear how your 2022 is going and if you’re using any planning systems to get your goals on track so please let me know in the comments below.
