Why I’ve Stopped GOAL SETTING Quarterly
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Periodization. That’s the beauty of the 12 week year, or any quarterly planning. I have done a lot of quarterly planning, sometimes successfully. Sometimes not. But I’m not doing it these days.
Today I’ll tell you what I’m doing instead and why so you can see if there’s something in my current goal setting system that might be helpful for you. There IS a lot about the 12 Week Year that I like and I definitely borrow from it heavily. But not the 12 week part.
Why not Quarterly planning?
Q1-4 are designed for businesses, syncing up with other businesses. There probably isn’t any reason why you as an individual (or small business) need to be doing your goal setting aligned with Jan-Mar, April-June, July-Sept, Oct-Dec. As much as I like to be on the same cycle as everyone else, that’s not a good enough reason to stick with quarters.
Enter The 12 Week Year. I like that it can start any time, be any twelve weeks. It’s really just 90 day planning that starts any time. For the author the battle cry was “every day is a week”…”get more done in 12 weeks than most people do in a year”. So I just think it’s 12 weeks because it’s catchier.
Again, I like a LOT of the stuff within the book. Particularly the fact that, as with any goal setting that’s shorter than a year, it instills a sense of urgency. That’s good. But I’m finding that these days, 12 weeks is even too long for me.
Why not 90 days/12 weeks?
By week 6, I’d often end up so off track it’d be disheartening. Or the period would span too many ‘different times of the year’.
If it’s working for you, great. It seems a little too long for me in this ‘season of life’. I’ve always ended up wanting a fresh start before I hit the end of it. So I have tried various timeframes.
So What would my battle cry be?
For me, it’s not to shorten the year into a quarter. It’s to lengthen a month into two and give myself permission to focus on something for an extended time, but not so extended that other things will be harmed.
If I was going to do a different period of time, I’d go shorter still, not longer. The halfway point in a quarter was a pretty sweet spot, but it’s awkward to ME to cut months in half (I’ve tried). But I’d prefer one month to three at this time in my life.
I did some of this last year but not consistently. I was playing with different time lengths, which led me to realize that I want SOME regularity to the lengths. I really started it with Jan/Feb and Mar/April of this year.
I’d LOVE to do something more coordinated with moon phases, but I haven’t gotten that to work for me yet. I also tried to have ‘seasons’ of varying lengths, but that didn’t work for me either. The sweet spot I’ve found is two months.
It still uses the artificial calendar start, rather than something more meaningful, but 8-9 weeks seems to work pretty well. And there are a lot of things that work out well on monthly calendars, so I’m going with it for now.
What are my seasons?
The seasons I’m using this year are:
Jan-Feb Winter
Mar-April Early Spring
May-June Late Spring
July-August Summer
Sept-Oct Fall
Nov-Dec Holidays
Some of the reasons this works for me
School Year and Gardening - As a former high school teacher married to a current high school teacher, the school year is king. The other consideration for me is gardening. Where we currently live we’re on what I consider to be the more traditional school year. School here starts after labor day and gets out mid-June. So Summer of July and August is an anchor. Sept-Oct flow well from that and also work well for our weather here. Nov-Dec for Holidays is pretty self explanatory, at least for the US. It also works well here gardening-wise, though Nov-Feb is really one big season…I had seasons called Rain and More Rain once.
I like the shorter season for Jan-Feb at the start of the year. Though I actually didn’t mind when I previously had Dec-Jan together in a season because we all know that New Years on 1/1 doesn’t always work well. 2/1 is a more ‘normal’ start to a sequence of things, or even 1/15. But I like the balanced-ness of all the seasons being two months, so I’m living with it. Yes, I love being a rebel, but I give in on this one. March and April is a great pairing for me garden wise and other community/volunteer responsibilities, same with May and June. And with my husband home mid-June to August, it’s about as good as I can get while keeping to two month seasons.