Shorten Your “Year” To Get More Done
What exactly does it mean to shorten your year to get more done? Here’s the basic idea – take what you normally think of doing in a year; a big project, making changes (habits, etc), and now compress that to 10-12 weeks.
Now, that doesn’t mean that you will magically get things done that take 52 weeks! What it does mean is that you will start to think about things on a much shorter time scale and will mentally be accountable for much more…which means you are MUCH more likely to take action and be more productive.
A book I’ve read previously talks about this at length and I recommend reading it for the ideas and motivation behind shortening your
planning period alone. You can find the 12 Week Year right here – it’s a pretty quick read and had a few key take aways for me that really helped me kick start my projects.
- Having a shorter time period in which to accomplish goals means you can’t put them off. Think about New Year’s resolutions – it’s easy to say to yourself “I’ll get started in February, since I have a year…” and then you end up doing nothing. Having 12 weeks to get something done is much more realistic and you mentally can “see” the finish – and see that you have to start doing tasks now to get there!
- You can get much more done than you think you can in a short period of time. We all spend a lot of time distracted and focusing on less tasks in a shorter period of time is a great way to get MORE done in a short time span. Simple and effective.
Another interesting book that I came across was the EOFire “Freedom Journal. This book is great for going after a single objective or project in 100 days (roughly 12 weeks…no surprise there!). This is like taking the 12 Week Year and making an action plan book.
If you’re wanting to put the idea of a shorter time period project cycle grab one of these journals / workbooks and get started! It really is interesting to see the difference in productivity on days when you identify and clearly articulate your goals opposed to days where you just “do work”. You can find the Freedom Journal right here.
At first I thought that the $40 price on the Freedom Journal was high, but after using it there is certainly that much value in it, and now that I know how to use it for planning I’m going to integrating the concepts in it with the 5 Minute Journal and make my own daily planner / project list that works better for my layout and needs.
