THE ASIAN EFFICIENCY

WAY TO IMPLEMENT A
12 WEEK YEAR

Transcripts
 Intro & Crafting a Vision
Video 1

Welcome to The 12 Week Year, 2.0.

The 12 Week Year is a popular book on how to approach goal setting in a whole new way. At its core,
there is five key points in the book, which I’ll dive deeper into in this module.

First, start with the strong vision. Second, focus on 12 weeks instead of a full year, which is the typ-
ical timeline most people set goals for. Third, focus on execution on just one to three goals. Fourth,
tracking execution score or reporting. Fifth, time blocking. And finally six, accountability.

Let’s first focus on item two, the name of the book after all, and why it’s such a critical concept.
Having goals to begin with is critical, but for many high performers, the year context can be a barri-
er to them. The reason for this is there’s just too much distance between setting and accomplishing
goals. It’s just too hard to see the finish line. Think about all the excitement there is at the end of
a new year, and a start of a new one. You forget about the past year. The lack of progress, failures,
and you make new commitments. What if you could hit the reset button like this every 12 weeks
instead? By chunking your year into smaller pieces, you don’t need to have a dozen goals, you can
just focus on a couple. Last, you can leverage this focus by creating a specific plan of action for this
limited goal set to drive massive results.

The book has been tremendously helpful for me personally, but I felt there were some rather large
gaps that took me quite a bit of time to fill in before I could fully implement the 12 week system.
For example, the book opened my eyes to the importance of vision, but it doesn’t give you tactical
advice on how to draft a vision statement, and limiting goals to just two or three is great, but how
do I determine which goals I should choose in the first place?

This module will summarize the book, fill in the gaps, and provide a tactical plan to help you think
more strategically, align your goals and priorities.

Let’s get started. Everything begins with vision. Vision is your future potential. It’s where you want
to go. It’s not the plan, but it drives the direction of the plan. To me, vision was just fluff. It was the
pep talk, the rah-rah. Important, but not critical. The 12 Week Year’s heavy emphasis and delivery
drastically changed how I feel about vision. You see, we create everything twice. First in our mind,
and then in the physical world. It’s the key to creating things. Vision is critical to help you fight the
resistance and overcome inertia. It’s your compass to determine your direction. The filter in which
you see the world. The shift in thinking from seeing vision as fluff, to seeing it as the mother of all
creation, is a fundamental shift in the thinking that can pay huge dividends. You are the writer and
architect of your life, and your vision is the rudder.

AE DOJO | 12 WEEK YEAR 2

One of my favorite quotes that reveals a simple truth about life, and the importance of vision is from
Bill Gates. “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they
can do in ten years.”

Writing a vision statement can be incredibly difficult. What is it even supposed to look like? Turning
to Google does not provide much help, and although the book does an incredible job of telling you
why a vision is so important, it offers little in the realm of help for crafting your own vision state-
ment.

I’ve created a system of vision tips, formats, and prompts, that will take all the guesswork out of it
for you. Here are the 13 high level tips for crafting your vision. Future tense, focus on a day in the
future. Typically people focus on five years. Big and audacious. This is an absolute must. Why do this
otherwise? Emotionally charged. You need to be excited about this, it needs to drive action. Be spe-
cific, include little details. You don’t want this to be vague. Simple. A simple vision is one that’s gon-
na be remembered and followed. Subject to change. This doesn’t have to be written in stone, and
perhaps most importantly, it doesn’t have to be constrained by the past. Forget about what you’ve
done or not done, start with a new vision.

Another sticking point is the format. There’s a lot of opinions out here, and my advice is to be cre-
ative, and use what works best for you. Some like to create a long form narrative story. This could
be in the first or third person, but they’re typically extremely detailed. Such as walking you through
a day five years in the future. Where you are, who is with you, how you feel, and what you see and
smell, et cetera. For the visually minded, you can draw, sketch, or scrapbook a vision statement.
Visuals can be a powerful motivator, and if this is how you typically process and think about things,
I highly suggest this route. Others prefer a simple bulleted list that can be easily digested and re-
viewed frequently. Mix and match and pick what works best for you.

Now that you know the importance of vision, tips, and selected your format, it’s time to get start-
ed. That blank canvas can be quite intimidating, however. Here are the different prompts that can
get the creative juices flowing and help you get started on that first draft. All of these and other
resources are available as supplemental downloads for this module. As you review these prompts,
try and think about how they relate to the context of your work, health, and family. What is your
purpose, mission or movement? What legacy would you like to leave behind? What adventures do you
want to pursue? How do you measure success? What do you want your relationships to be like? What
does your ideal day look like? I suggest you take these tips, format, and prompts and apply this sim-
ple process.

First, pick a time frame. Some point in the future, again people typically pick five years. It seems to
be far enough away, but not too far that it’s unattainable. Create a draft. Don’t hesitate, just get
started. This isn’t have to take as much time as you think it has to as well. Share and get feedback.
Take your draft, and share it with a couple people you respect and trust. Keep in mind, you don’t
have to change anything they suggest this is your vision. Getting feedback can help find gaps you
might have not seen, and challenge you in new areas.

AE DOJO | 12 WEEK YEAR 3

 Goals
Video 2

Now that you’ve determined your vision, it’s time to create a plan. The goals you select and the exe-
cution and completing them will form the building blocks to the life you desire. Because we are only
focused on 12 weeks, we can focus on just a handful of goals. The author recommends no more than
three.

Focusing and deciding on what not to do is just as important as what you ultimately select. Saying
no is tough and it can be overwhelming when you consider every area of your life. Before you decide
where you want to go, it’s a pretty good idea to understand where you are now, to get situational
awareness.

You can divide your life into 14 important segments and again by using the exercise of prompts and
questions, start to paint a picture of where you are currently in each area. Full credit for these sec-
tions and prompts goes to Alex Vermeer and his excellent 8,760 Hours, How to Get the Most Out of
Next Year, ebook.

Being a visual thinker, I adapted his questions and created a mind map, adequately called the Life
Map. I used this to map everything out. We start first with some prompts on your progress for the
past 12 week year. What went well and where did you not get as far as you wanted to? There are
then some basic questions that apply to every section such as the summary. Fill this in once you’ve
finished with every other prompt. This is gonna be your condensed down version of all your answers
into a concise statement paragraph. Your rating of one through ten, what is your current situation
here? How do things stand right now, the following from the past 12 weeks. Projects completed,
milestones, important events, project status, accomplishments, and failures. Finally, what are your
strengths and weaknesses in this area. Each area then has some specific prompts and questions to
help you out. You don’t need to fill in every answer. The goal is to jog your memory and get a few
thoughts on paper, to think out loud. This will help you create a compelling summary and accurate
reading. The other sections include contribution and impact, how are you providing value to the
world? Career and work, how is your stress? Do you have mastery, control and purpose? Emotions and
well-being, how do you feel about life? Character and integrity, what is your identity? Money and
finance, do you have enough money, savings, and a budget? Productivity and organization, are things
too complex or simple? Are you too busy? Locations and tangibles, is life cluttered? Are you tied down
to a single location? Values and purpose, what do you want out of life? Adventures and creativity,
what fun things have you done lately? Social life and relationships, are you a good friend? Education
and skill development, how much have you read in the last 12 weeks? Health and fitness, how often
do you get sick? How much sleep? And finally spiritual. Depending on where you land on this one,
this is an optional category. Since this is highly personalized, I’ve left the prompts on this one blank,
but I highly encourage you to go deep here if this is something you value. You don’t have to spend
a whole day on this, but I encourage you to spend at least a few hours. Once you get in the habit of
doing this, it’ll take even less time. Once you finish answering all the questions and prompts, don’t
forget to take time to write down a high level summary and overall rating.

AE DOJO | 12 WEEK YEAR 4

Here is a sample of one of the areas on my personal life map. It can be at times overwhelming to see
areas you desperately want to improve, but feel you aren’t able to. An important metaphor for life
is that of dynamic steering. When you hop on the bike to go down the road, you know exactly where
you’re going. That line, however, is never straight. You make all these micro-adjustments, back and
forth, dynamic steering. Such is life. You will never have full balance in all these areas. By taking the
time to do this, however, you will live a life intentionally. You have more control over the areas you
can invest into and you can kick the can in areas you want to, but not now. Reflect on the areas that
are giving you the most discomfort or you’re most excited about. Combine this with your vision to
make your final selection and narrow down your top two to three goals. We will then craft a plan for
accomplishing these in the next section.

AE DOJO | 12 WEEK YEAR 5

 12 Week Year System
Video 3

As mentioned at the start of this module, the 12 Week Year transforms what normally people plan for
a year and converts it into a 12-week year. A week is effectively then a month and a day is a week.
This is a concept called periodization which is borrowed from the sports world where athletes will
focus on a critical skill they want to develop over a similar length of time. 12 weeks is enough time
to get something big done, but short enough that you still feel a sense of urgency. You can always see
the end zone. Your two to three goals need to be concise and something that is a realistic stretch.
They need to be specific and measurable. You need to create clarity around what you want to do and
how you will measure progress.

A 12 Week Year plan includes your vision, the central lens of the whole system. Your goals are con-
nected to your vision. Two to three goals. The key is to try to break these down into daily, week-
ly, and monthly habits, routines, and rituals. This is a critical part of this process. You’re trying to
develop new behaviors and habits are your super weapon for doing this. Spend time really thinking
about the new habits that you wanna put in place. Key milestones. These are key actions, events,
or milestones. These could be things like joining a gym, which would occur just once, hitting a cer-
tain sales metric, which could be a weekly goal, or launching a new product, a milestone. Try not to
overthink this. Keep the most important things on this list, short and sweet. Here is a sample from
the 12 Week Year. You can clearly see the two goals selected. Each goal has a action plan with habits
and routines, and key milestones.

While I’m in the planning mode, I like to use visuals to assist me. I personally love David Seah’s
digital Compact Calendar. I love how everything can fit on a single sheet of paper. I draw a line from
the start and the end of the 12-week year, and then I start planning on the white space to the right.
Asian Efficiency even has a special 12-week year calendar that is big and bold and can definitely help
you keep your plan front and center. The importance of these tools that you want to get a visual in
front of your face as often as possible. What gets measured, gets managed.

Now that you have your goals and a plan, the only thing stopping you is execution. Winning is execut-
ing on the right things, not getting more done. You will never get everything done. You need to work
smarter and not harder to be intentional, your plan helps you do that. One thing that hit me square
between the eyes when reading this book is that people don’t have a knowledge problem, they have
an execution problem. You are capable of two to three times what you’re currently doing with the
information you have right now. Just sit back and think about that for a minute. As a fellow geek, my
thirst for knowledge and information is endless. I wanna keep learning the next trick, hack, and tool.
What I really need to do is roll up my sleeves and get to work.

Execution is critical, it’s the single biggest differentiator. The way you execute your 12-week plan is
through weekly planning. You will run your week and your day by it. Make an appointment with your-
self before the week starts to review your vision, goals, and plan. Identify all the habits you need to
focus on for the next week and milestones you need to hit. When you plan like this, you know exact-
ly what needs to be done and you either do it or you don’t. It’s binary, yes or no.

AE DOJO | 12 WEEK YEAR 6

What you then do is track each time you execute the plan. This is called your execution score. The
reason the execution score is so important is because it’s the lowest common denominator. It’s what
you have direct control over. These are called leading indicators. They are metrics that you can track
that will show correlation with ultimate success. Once the 12 Week Year is done, you can definite-
ly do a retrospective and measure your progress. This is called lag measure. This problem here, of
course, is that there was a lag between the action and the measured result. This lag removes your
power to influence.

Here are some samples of lead versus lag indicators. I have two goals, a work sales goal and a per-
sonal fitness goal. For lead indicators, on my sales goal, I have a certain amount of calls I wanna
make, emails, meetings, proposals, all things I have direct control over. For my fitness goal, I wanna
work out a certain amount of times per week and get a certain amount of steps in. Compare this
with my lag indicators. For sales, I wanna hit a certain amount of sales over my 12-week year and
for fitness, I wanna loss a certain amount of pounds. It’s not that lag indicators don’t matter, it’s
that you should focus more on lead indicators and you can drastically increase your influence on lag
indicators.

Successful people measure lead indicators. Your execution score. Here’s a sample execution score
rating report I used with a mastermind group I’m a part of. We have a tab that breaks down the goal,
the habits, the rituals, as well as the milestones. I run my weekly plan off of this. It is similar to the
12-week sample I shared earlier. Then, on the reporting tab, there’s a simple yes or no. I either did
or did not do what I committed to do that day for my weekly plan. This then dynamically creates a
percentage, giving me my execution score. We check in with each other weekly and monthly to hold
each other accountable for poor scores or missed milestones.

More on that later. A link to this template is in the Resource section for this module. To execute, you
need to be in control of your time. In the 12 Week Year, they called this performance time. This is
broken down into three categories. Strategic blocks, this is the important and non-urgent work that
will be critical to staying on track. With this time, you’ll review your plan, do your weekly review,
and get into deep work to move things forward.

A useful strategy is to block time off in your calendar to do this. I like to do this first thing in the
morning, as this is when I’m the freshest and I only take meetings after 10 a.m. This ensures that
each day I can chip away at my goals and is a simple way to stick to a schedule that is geared to-
wards success.

The partner to strategic time is buffer blocks. This is where you batch all of your low-value work
that typically disrupts your deep work into time chunks. Schedule these in your calendar just like
strategic time. I suggest doing this as few times as you can afford to get away with. If your job
requires you to monitor an inbox, you can definitely check it more. The important thing to do is to
make sure it’s on your schedule and that you’re not doing it out of compulsion. This has been one of
the hardest habits for me to break. I’ve used tools like Inbox Pause for Gmail where my email is only
delivered at certain times or an app like Focus that prevents my mail from opening when I’m in a
Focus session or not in one of my scheduled buffer blocks.

AE DOJO | 12 WEEK YEAR 7

Last is break out blocks. These are planned times to recharge your batteries doing something you en-
joy doing during normal work hours. If you have a tough schedule, try to fit these in once a month at
least. Taking time to recharge will allow you to come back fully and continue working away at your
plan.

The last area and perhaps the most important is accountability. This was another concept I was all
too familiar with, but figured I was above it. I suggest you check your ego on this because I feel this
is the secret sauce to high performers.

What opened my eyes was a story cited from Fast Company, Change or Die. What if a trusted au-
thority figure in your life told you that you needed to make a change in your life or you would die?
What would your chances at success be? Well, they’re not good. The scientifically studied odds are
90% failure rate. That’s with the strongest motivator known to man, your survival instinct. There was
a group that had a much higher success rate, almost seven times greater. These patients were in a
peer support group and they had a success rate of 80%. I don’t like to play the odds here. 90% failure
rate or 80% success rate? I started to take accountability seriously and I think you should, too. I’m
constantly on the lookout for a hack or a cheat code for life, and after reading that, I felt like I just
discovered one.

Personally, I participate in a mastermind group where the main focus is accountability. We share our
12-week plans and have committed to checking in with each other, keeping score if you will, and
calling each other out if we fall behind. Another solo strategy is journaling. This powerful self-reflec-
tion technique can provide a connection to reality and keep you in check with how you’re doing on
your plan.

I’ve used prompts like the following in my daily journal routine. What is the status of my goals and
projects? What is going well, what’s going poorly? Am I on track? Are my goals still the most import-
ant goals? What is interesting on this last one is that I typically found in months three or six of a typ-
ical annual plan, I either hit my goals, miss them so bad I had no chance of catching up, or became
bored. Not so with the 12 Week Year. A reboot is always around the corner.

Well, that wraps up the 12 Week Year 2.0 module. Take these action steps to get started. I wanna
place special attention on just a few things. Vision, shift your thinking as this as fluff to this a linch-
pin. Dynamic steering. Your focus and performance in each area of your life will vary. What you can
control, however, is your intention on what you focus on. Focus, pick just two to three things. Keep
score, it’s motivating and it’s your touchstone to reality. Execution. You have everything you need to
know right now to be successful. Accountability. Transform 90% failure into 80% success. Thanks and
good luck.

AE DOJO | 12 WEEK YEAR 8