Book Review: The Twelve Week Year

Title: The Twelve Week Year
Author: Brian P. Moran and Michael Pennington
Genre: Productivity, Self Help, Non-fiction

What It’s About: There are three principles—Accountability (taking ownership of everything regardless of circumstances), Commitment (following through with your word/ promises), and Greatness in the Moment (when you make the choice to do what is necessary to become great is when greatness happens, not when you get the results).

There Five Disciplines that you need to successfully carry out the 12 week year:

1. Vision—clear picture of the future you want.
2. Planning—clarify and focus on the top priority initiatives and actions needed to achieve the vision
3. Process control—set of tools and events that align your daily action with critical action in your plan.
4. Measurement—combines lead and lag indicators that provide feedback on goals. Lead indicators are the things that happen early in the execution; they are the things that you do to get the results you want. Lag indicators are the end results and your goals are your ultimate lag indicators.
5. Time Use—using your time intentionally in order to be in control of your results.

The Book also goes over the 5 criteria you need to create better 12 week plans:

1. Make goals specific and measurable, the more specific the better.
2. State them positively—focus on what you want to happen that is positive
3. Ensure that they are a realistic stretch—if too easy, stretch ore; if too difficult, dial back.
4. Assign accountability
5. Be time-bound, and include a date by which the goal is to be reached

Establish your 12 week goals and write out your 12 week plan:

1. Write each goal separately
2. For each goal, define the highest-priority daily and weekly actions that you must take to reach that goal. Pick the ones that will have the greatest impact.
3. For actions you decide to implement, write them as full sentences that start with a verb and describe the action you want to take.
4. Finally, specify the due date of the week you intend to execute the action.

Considering some questions on what you will struggle with and what you’d do to overcome those struggles.

The book further goes into support structures, that goes into scoring your weekly results, planning your weekly and attending Weekly Accountability Meetings (“WAM”) with friends or coworkers who want to be there where you discuss your progress, and share tips on how to effectively handle tasks.

The book also recommends three different time blocks per week: Strategic Blocks (a 3 hour time block during work hours per week to get your strategic tasks done), Breakout Blocks (a 3 hour time block once a week during work hours to do something creative or fun that lets you rest) and Buffer blocks (daily 30 minutes to an hour blocks where you handle administrative tasks).

Lastly, the authors speak to Accountability and Commitment, and explore these concepts further as well as how they impact your life and the ones around you.

My Thoughts: I thought that this was an interesting concept about getting more done in 12 weeks than people usually do in a year, because it’s so true how we basically get stuff done when there are deadlines. I really enjoyed being reminded of the different facets of productivity—planning, reviewing your goals, and scorecarding/tracking the goals—as well as the reminder on accountability (stop being a victim, or making yourself a victim because of [insert whatever excuses you moan about]), and commitment (do what you say you were going to do; don’t be wishy washy about it). It was a great reminder of my values as an individual who loves to goal-set and dream, and it also, in some ways, clarifies exactly the type of environments I need to avoid (and there are a few corporate roles in certain units that do exactly the opposite that I know of, which is why I wouldn’t want to work for them). Overall, a phenomenal read, and I will implement many of these strategies in 2025. If you want to learn how to get things done, and are ready to transform your year, read this book.