If you could fully tap your potential, what might be different for you? How would your life change if each and every day your performed up to your full potential. 

You can't build a reputation by what you are going to do.

Why 12 Week Year  - Shorter time frames 

One of the things that gets in the way of individuals and organizations achieving their best is the annual planning process. Annual goals and plans are often a barrier to high performance. At the heart of annualized thinking is an unspoken belief that there is plenty of time in the year to make things happen. Stop thinking in terms of a year; instead focus on shorter time frames.

Year-end push | Year-end is an exciting and productive time. activity is up and people are focused. With little time to waste and with clear objectives to meet, workers focus on the critical projects and opportunities. Tasks that are not directly related to driving results are pushed aside for what really matters in the short-term. In these remaining days, a strong sense of urgency replaces diffusion and downtime. 

The great thing about having a 12 Week Year is that the deadline is always near enough that you never lose sight of it. It provides a time horizon that is long enough to get things done, yet short enough to create a sense of urgency and a bias for action. It's human nature that we behave differently when a deadline approaches. We procrastinate less, we reduce or eliminate avoidance activity, and we focus more on the things that matter. You no longer have the luxury of putting off the critical activities.

Every 12 Weeks you get a fresh start. If you haven't had a tough 12 week year. You can just shake it off, regroup, and start again,  if you had,  you can build on that momentum. Every 12 week is a new start. The 12 Week Year presents, at a minimum, four times as many opportunities to recognize and celebrate your progress and accomplishments. 

Effective execution isn't complicated, but it's not necessarily easy. When faced with a course of action that includes difficult or uncomfortable tasks, the short-term cost of taking action can seem so much greater than the long-term benefits of reaching the goal. The issue is that the important actions are often the uncomfortable ones. In our experience, the number-one thing that you will have to sacrifice to be great, to achieve what you are capable of, and to execute your plan, is your comfort.

Thinking Shift - experience breakthrough 

The 12 Week Year is a structured approach that fundamentally changes the way you think and act, It's important to understand that the results you achieve are a direct byproduct of the actions you take. Your actions, in turn, are manifestations of your underlying thinking. Ultimately it is your thinking that drives your results; it is your thinking that creates your experience in life.

When you focus on changing your actions, you experience incremental improvements; however when your thinking shifts - everything changes. Breakthrough results don't start with your actions, they are first created in your thinking.

Vision is the starting point 

Vision is the starting point of all high performance. You create things twice; first mentally, then physically. The biggest barrier to high performance is not the physical manifestation but the mental creation. You must be clear on what it is you want to create. 

Most people focus primarily on their business or career, but business is just part of life, and it is actually your life vision that gives relevance to your business. 

It is your personal vision that creates an emotional connection to the daily actions that need to take place in your business. It is your personal vision that keeps you in the game when things become difficult. The reason so many people fail to follow through when things become difficult is due to this lack of connection with their personal lives. 

You business objectives are not the end in themselves, but the means to an end. 

Vision provides you with the line of sight, the emotional link, to help you overcome the challenges and execute. When the task seems too difficult or unpleasant, you can reconnect with your personal objectives and vision. It is this emotional connection that will provide you with the inner strength to forge ahead in spite of any difficulties, thus enabling you to achieve your dreams and desires.

The first thing that is different with 12 week planning is that it is more predictable than 12 month planning. The farther you plan into the future, the less predictability you have. With long-term plans, assumptions are stacked upon earlier assumptions, which are stacked upon earlier assumptions.

The reality is that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to determine what your daily actions should be 11 or 12 months into the future. This is why annual plans are generally objective-based.

The second difference with 12 week planning is that it is more focused. Most annual plans have too many objectives, which is one of the primary reasons execution fails. The 12 week plan focuses on a few key areas and creates the energy and urgency to act.

The whole point of planning should be to help you identify and implement the critical few actions that you need to take to reach your goal. 

The weekly plan is a powerful tool that translates your 12 week plan into daily and weekly action. The weekly plan is the instrument that organizes and focuses your week. This will keep you on track with your core activity each day. The weekly plan should reflect the critical strategic activity from your 12 week plan that needs to take place this week in order for you to achieve your goals.

The reality is that if you are not purposeful about how you spend your time, then you leave your results to chance. While it is true that we control our actions and not our outcomes, our results are created by our actions. It stands to reason that the actions that we choose to take throughout our day ultimately determine our destiny. 

 It stands to reason …是合乎情理的,理所当然

You will spend whatever time is needed to respond without giving much thought as to the relative value of the activity. When you spend your time with intention, you know when to say yes and when to say no. You are probably aware when you are procrastinating or engaging in low-level activity to avoid tackling a less comfortable high-payoff activity. 

without giving much thought as to 没有考虑太多

Strategic Blocks: Focus all your energy on preplanned tasks - your strategic and money-making activities. concentrate your intellect and creativity to produce breakthrough results. 

Buffer blocks: The power of buffer blocks comes from grouping together activities that tend to be unproductive so that you can increase your efficiency in dealing with them and take greater control over the rest of your day.

Breakout Blocks: to achieve greater results, what's often necessary is not actually working more hours, but rather taking some time away from work. It allows you to refresh and reinvigorate [ˌri:ɪn'vɪɡəreɪt] your mind.

reinvigorate 使再振作，使复兴

Accountability is a willingness to own your actions and results regardless of the circumstances. The very nature of accountability rests in the understanding that each and every one of us has freedom fo choice. Accountability is the realization that you always have choices; that, in fact, there are no have-to's in life. Everything we do in life is a choice. True accountability confronts with freedom of choice and the consequences of those choices. 

Many of us fall short of our commitments on a regular basis. It seems that when things get difficult, we find reasons why we can't keep our promises and we shift our focus to other activities. Often our interest wanes when things get tough. It is important to understand that there is a difference between interest and commitment: When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstances permit, but when you're committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results.

fall short of 缺乏; 不足; 达不到

wane 衰落

Here are four keys to successful commitments:

1. Strong desire: in order to fully commit to something, you need a clear and personally compelling reason. 

compelling 非常强烈的; 不可抗拒的

2. Keystone actions: Once you have an intense desire to accomplish something, you then need to identify the core actions that will produce the result you're after. However there are usually a few core activities that account for the majority of the results, and in some cases there are only one or two keystone actions that ultimately produce the result. It is critical that you identify these keystones and focus on them.

Keystone 重点; 要旨; 基本原理

3. Count the costs: commitments require sacrifice. In any effort there are benefits and costs. Too often we claim to commit to something without considering the costs, the hardship that will have to be overcome to accomplish your desire. Identifying the costs before you commit allow you to consciously choose whether you are willing to pay the price of your commitment. 

4. Act on commitments, not feelings: there will be times when you won't feel like doing the critical activities. It is during these times that you will need to learn to act on your commitments instead of your feelings. If you don't, you will never build any momentum and will get stuck continually restarting or , as it so often the case, giving up. Learning to do the things you need to do, regardless of how you feel, is a core discipline for success. 

act on sth 依…行事