New Year's planning

How to Plan for This Year's Goals

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Back in July of 2017, I took the leap to form Shaping Development, my first venture in owning my own business.  In October of 2017, another opportunity presented itself and I also formed Operant Coffee.  Starting both LLCs took an amazing amount of courage, but thanks to my executive coach, Dave, (see Coaching for Leaders) for introducing me to the concept of The 12 Week Year* by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington, I was able to strategize and organize my tasks into the remaining 12 weeks of the year. 

In special education, the process of breaking larger tasks into smaller tasks is called "chunking."  In behavior analysis, we call it a "task analysis."  Whatever you want to call it, I think the only way I was able to accomplish as much as I did the last three months was by breaking everything down into the 12 Week Year.

The concept of the 12 Week Year is simple.  Ultimately, you break three months of tasks into 12 weeks (or 3 months).  The first 12 weeks are laid out with the tasks per week, and then the 13th week is set aside as a planning week for the next 12 weeks (52 does not evenly divide by 12 :-).  The idea is that instead of focusing on the whole year, which can seem overwhelming, you focus on your goals for 12 weeks at a time, allowing that 13th week for troubleshooting. 

Moran and Lennington have lots of tools to assist you in doing this when you purchase their book/system.  It also can be done simply using an excel spreadsheet as I did, where I just outlined the 12 weeks by date, and divided the sheet up between the two businesses.  As I move forward into the next year, I am spending this week reviewing what I accomplished, and outlining what's next for the next 12 weeks.  I hope that you will also find this system helpful as you move in to the next year!

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