12 Week Year planning guide
✨Quick Storytime: How I made $2400 appear out of thin air✨
At the beginning of October, I decided that I was going to purchase a new car by the end of the year. My daughter will be able to drive soon and will get my old car.
Before purchasing my new car, my husband and I agreed to pay off the old car early. We only owed $3900 so my plan was to put every dollar we had towards paying that car off.
Within the first two weeks of October I had already paid off over half of the remaining balance. When I thought about it, I started questioning where all that money came from and If I could come up with that kind of money in just two weeks, why hadn’t I paid the car off early years ago?
Why was I still paying on the car? Where is all this money coming from?
It wasn’t that I was making extra money. It was because I gave myself a very short deadline to pay the car off. I then became laser focused on it and that is where I put all my energy. I didn’t purchase unnecessary things or waste money elsewhere. My only goal was paying off the car.
This is how we operate. If we are given a 5 year car loan, most people will take all 5 years to pay it off, but if you are given a shorter time frame, you will pay the car off faster.
I was more financially productive in the first two weeks of October than I was the entire year.
That is why the 12 week year planning system will help you.
A new way to plan for the new year
This is perhaps my favorite time of year. The time where I have a blank canvas for the year ahead. I can do whatever I want with my life for an entire year. I always feel very inspired when it comes to planning my year.
However…
I must say that I am just like everyone else when it comes to New Years Resolutions and annual planning…
I tend to fall off in the middle of the year. The excitement is gone and so many things happen in the first half of the year that get distracted and thrown on a completely new path.
That is why this year I am very excited because I am going to plan my year in a completely different way than I ever have before.
I’m starting the 12 week year plan.
What is the 12 week year plan?
There is a book called The 12 Week Year by Brian P Morgan. In this book, Brian introduces the idea of breaking your year up into 4 quarters. Each quarter is considered a full year.
Even though this was groundbreaking information to me, I quickly realized that this isn’t a new concept at all. Businesses do this all the time.
Businesses break up their year into four quarters and try to grow each quarter.
When I first heard this idea, it took me a while to get used to the thought of a year being only 12 weeks long to me.
But it makes sense, because if we are given more time to do something, it will take us more time to actually do it.
The 12 week year plan is the key to supercharging your goals. By shortening your allotted time, you are forcing yourself to complete things much faster.
Interested? Here’s how to start the 12 week year plan for yourself.
Create a vision for your dreams
In order to start this exercise, there has to be an overall vision of what you want your life to look like. There are several different ways to do that, but my two favorite ways are creating a digital vision board or making a list of 300 things.
It is important to note that when you are setting goals, there are 7 categories to take into consideration
- Health & Wellness
- Finance
- Relationships
- Career
- Personal Development
- Family
- Mental Health
The list of 300 things
I saw this idea on Instagram. It originally came from a motivational speech from Steve Harvey. In the speech, Steve says to sit down and make a list of 300 things that you want in your life. Your big goals, small goals and everything in between.
He mentions that after the first 75 or so, it will become harder to think of things that you want from life. In my experience that is definitely true. Keep trying and add in everything that you want until you reach 300 things.
Once you have your vision board or your list, you can take these goal ideas and separate them into 3 categories.
- 12 Week Goals
- Mid term goals (2-3 years in the future)
- Long term goals
Sorting these will help you figure out where exactly you need to begin when it comes to creating an action plan for these goals.
Creating a 12 week plan for you goals
Now that you have your list of goals that are separated by category and timeframe, it’s time to create your 12 week plan.
All you have to do to create a plan is take your main goal and break it down into smaller goals. I will use paying my car off early as an example since I already mentioned it earlier in this post.
- Goal: Pay off the car
- Amount owed: $3900
- Timeframe: 12 weeks
I’ve written my goal and the desired timeframe. Now I have to break that down into smaller goals. The first thing I would do is a little bit of math. I would divide $3900 by 12 to see how much money I would need to contribute per week to pay it off in 12 weeks.
$3900 divided by 12 is $325. That means that I need to come up with that amount of money every week in order to meet my goal. So here are some of the things I would do over the next 12 weeks to reach my goal.
- Pick up extra shifts at work
- Return anything I recently purchased that was unnecessary (as long as it is unopened/unworn)
- Stop eating out and make more food at home until the car is paid off
- Don’t purchase anything unnecessary and any time I am about to purchase something I stop and instead make a payment to the car for the amount I was about to spend.
This is how I plan on taking a goal and breaking it down into smaller steps in order to achieve all of my goals this year.
You can do the same with your goals. All you have to do is identify the goals and then break them down into smaller goals.
Remember, the way to achieving things in life is by taking baby steps. If you put in the effort, little by little it will pay off and you will see results in your life.
