This week I started The 12 Week Year how to get more done in 12 weeks than some people do all year. It’s been an interesting read so far. I hadn’t really considered the pitfalls of full year thinking previously. Of course, few of us do. We’re inundated with the fact that you need to pick at the beginning of the year where you want to be at the end of the year. It offers a seductive idea that you’re going to be able to hold the discipline throughout the year and make your dreams come true.
Pitfall #1: Procrastination. Full year thinking allows you to put things off and be sure there will be more time. Unfortunately, as we all know, the tendency to put things off means things never quite get done or they get rushed through at the last minute.
Pitfall #2: Motivation. As I’ve read in a number of different books, motivation is not a linear progression. It ebbs and flows. Without motivation to get stuff done, we are more likely to procrastinate and there is nothing quite like knowing there is more time to allow our motivation to stagnate and thus let us procrastinate.
Those two pitfalls to year long thinking are enough for me to reconsider whether or not year-long, or resolution thinking, is right for me. I want to make sure that I’m making the best use of my time. As I wrote in my previous blog, I’ve taken on a new challenge to produce 52 books in the next year. I started in February and my follow through was dismal. I found myself falling into the long term thinking trap of I will have more time to do that later. Then later would show up and I wouldn’t have anything to show for it. No matter what happened, I just pushed things off. March is going to be different. For one, I’ve scaled back my goals to allow me to do an extra single book a month until I get caught up instead of trying to do all the extras at one time. On top of that, I’m working on streamlining my process to let me get books out more efficiently. As of right now, I’m distributing solely through Amazon. I want to change that, which means prepping and formatting for other places such as Draft 2 Digital so that I can get the work out there.
I haven’t finished the 12 week year yet, but I know it requires a strong emotional vision of where I want to go. I’m going to put together that vision and I might even share it so that others can see how I implement the 12 week year to my own life.