Planning
12 week year
The 12 week year is a way of planning in which you treat twelve weeks as if they were a whole year. You pick a goal or two for those twelve weeks and list the actions each goal needs every week. At the end of each week, you check how many of those actions you did.
Last updated
Reviewed by Mohammed Raqeeb
What it is
What is the 12 week year?
The 12 week year is a plan that ends in twelve weeks, and not in December. A goal set in January for the whole year feels far away, so it is easy to leave until the autumn. A goal that ends in twelve weeks is always close, so you start now.
Twelve weeks is 84 days. Four of these stretches fit in a calendar year, with four weeks left over.
The method comes from the book The 12 Week Year, by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington, which came out in 2013 (the publisher’s listing). “The 12 Week Year” is their name for it. This page describes the method in our own words, and is not connected to the authors or their company.
The parts
How does the 12 week year work?
The 12 week year works in six parts, which the authors list on their own site. The table gives each part as something you do, in our own words.
| The part | What you do |
|---|---|
| A picture of where you want to be | Write down the life you want some years from now. The authors call this a vision. Your goals come from it. |
| Goals for the twelve weeks | Decide what will be true at the end of week twelve. |
| Actions for each goal | List the things you will do each week to get there. The authors call them tactics. |
| A way to measure | Pick the numbers that show whether the plan is working, such as pages written or sales made. |
| A weekly check | At the end of each week, look at the actions you planned and mark the ones you did. |
| Someone to answer to | Tell another person, or a small group, how your week went. |
That list and the authors’ home page do not say how to score a week. So this page uses a simple score of its own: the actions you did, divided by the actions you planned.
An example
What does a 12 week year plan look like?
A 12 week year plan is one goal, the actions it needs each week, and a score for every week. Here is one we made up. Lena makes candles and wants to start selling them.
Lena’s goal
By the end of week twelve, my online shop has thirty candles listed and has made its first ten sales.
| What she does each week | Hours a week |
|---|---|
| List one new candle in the shop, with photos3 times a week, 1h each | 3h |
| Post one photo on the shop’s social page3 times a week, 20m each | 1h |
| Write to one shop or person who might buy3 times a week, 20m each | 1h |
| Score the week and plan the next one1 time a week, 30m each | 30m |
| In all, 10 actions a week | 5h 30m |
| Week | Actions done | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | 8 of 10 | 80% |
| Week 2 | 6 of 10 | 60% |
| Week 3 | 9 of 10 | 90% |
Lena’s plan takes 5h 30m a week, or 66 hours over the twelve weeks. She cannot decide how many people buy. She can decide whether she does her 10 actions, so the plan counts actions and not sales.
This page calls a week good when four of every five planned actions got done, which is 80 percent. That line is our own, and not a figure from the authors. Lena’s first and third weeks reach it.
Try it
How many hours a week does your 12 week year need?
The planner below adds up your own plan. Write a goal, then list what you will do each week and how long each action takes. Lena’s plan is filled in as an example.
Your plan needs, each week
5h 30m
10 actions a week. Over the twelve weeks that is 66h.
Pick a start day to see when week twelve ends.
Your weekly score
To reach this page’s line of 80 percent, do at least 8 of your 10 actions each week.
Your score is 80%. That is at or above the line.
10 actions and 5h 30m a week, 66h in twelve weeks.
This plan is not saved. Copy it out before you close the tab. Nothing you enter leaves this page.
What studies found
Does the 12 week year work?
The 12 week year as a whole has not been tested in a published study that we could find. One part of it has support: keeping score.
A review put together many experiments in which some people kept track of their progress toward a goal and others did not. On average, the people who kept track did better at reaching their goals. It helped more when they wrote the progress down, and when they told someone else (Harkin and colleagues, 2016).
How to do it
How to start a 12 week year
You can start a 12 week year this weekend with one sheet of paper, and begin on Monday.
- Pick one goal the first time. Write what will be true at the end of week twelve, with a number in it.
- List what you will do each week. Three or four actions are enough. Next to each one, write how many times a week and how long it takes. A weekly planner template helps you give each one a day, and time blocking gives each one an hour.
- Score every week, on the same day. Divide the actions you did by the actions you planned, and write the number down.
In week twelve, look back at your scores and plan the next twelve weeks. A New Year’s resolution can be run the same way.
The test
How do you know your 12 week year is working?
The test
Your weekly score was 80 percent or more
in three weeks out of four.
A weekly score shows whether you did an action, not how long it took. A plan that looks like five hours a week on paper can take nine.
A good way to check is to count the hours from what you write or say about your day, and set them beside the hours your plan needs. Most journaling apps ask how the day felt. They do not add up the hours you gave each goal that week.
One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in.
You write or say your day in your own words, as it happens or all at once. The app reads what you wrote and counts the hours that went to each part of it: your goal, work, sleep, your phone, and the time you never mentioned (shown as unaccounted). Then it shows those hours over days and weeks. So you can see, week by week, how many hours your twelve-week goal really got. Put this week’s actions on your to-do list. When what you write about your day shows you did one, the app ticks it off.
1. You write your day
2. It counts the hours
- Shop0m
- Work0m
- Sleep0m
- Unaccounted24h
3. It shows your week
Shop this week: 0m
On 6 of 7 days. The gap is the day without it.
An example day and week.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.
Sources
Where do the facts on this page come from?
Every fact about the method links to a source below. We read the publisher’s listing, two pages of the authors’ own site and the summary of the review. We did not read the book itself. The weekly score and the example are our own.
- Wiley (read ). The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months, by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington.
- 12weekyear.com (read ). Accomplish as much as you did last year in 12 weeks!
- 12weekyear.com (read ). The 12 Week Year.
- Harkin, B., Webb, T. L., Chang, B. P. I., Prestwich, A., Conner, M., Kellar, I., Benn, Y. and Sheeran, P. (2016). Does monitoring goal progress promote goal attainment? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 142(2), 198 to 229.
Keep reading.
- LearnAnswers about sleep, habits, study, people and work, in hours.
- Eat the frogWhat eat the frog means, how to pick your hardest important task and start it first tomorrow, where the saying comes from, and a planner that gives the frog a start time.
- New Year’s resolutionsEight resolution ideas that say what to do and for how long, the most common resolutions from a YouGov poll, and four steps to keep yours.
- Weekly planner templateSeven days, Sunday first: the plan, what happened, and the week's hours.
- Where did my week go? calculatorEnter a typical day and see your week accounted and unaccounted.
- Time journalingThe method: write or say your day in your own words, then see it as hours.
Questions
Questions people ask.
What is the 12 week year?
The 12 week year is a way of planning in which you treat twelve weeks as if they were a whole year. You pick a goal or two, list the actions each goal needs every week, and check each week how many of them you did.
Who created the 12 week year?
Brian Moran and Michael Lennington. Their book, The 12 Week Year, came out in 2013. “The 12 Week Year” is their name for the method.
How many 12 week years fit in a year?
Four. Four stretches of twelve weeks fit in a calendar year, with four weeks left over.
Is there an app to track a 12 week year?
Paper works: one page with the goal, the weekly actions and a box for each week’s score. To see hours as well as the score, look for a way that counts time from what you write about your day. One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in. Think in Numbers counts the hours you gave each goal from what you write or say about your day, and shows them week by week. Your weekly actions can go on its to-do list too, and are ticked off from what you write about your day.
Try it on my day.
Write today down in your own words, and see where the hours went.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.