One Book Changed It All

Thank you Madison 💛

I will dedicate this one to Madison from A Simple Notion 💛

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Hey there 🤗

A few weeks back, in October, we were doing one of our weekly accounting call.

I told her about my goals for the rest of the year & I remember me saying:

“It’s impossible to release my course by the end of the year…”.

It’s when she shared with me a book title that would change everything.

Because as you has read yesterday, I’m good at ideation, not really at execution 😅

This book is “12 Week Year”.

Since my end of the year has been chaotic, I decided to give it a shot.

Armed with my Kindle, I started reading it.

Page after page, it has changed a lot of my self-belief about organization & productivity.

The aim: do in 12 weeks what others are doing in 12 months!

12 months are now 12 weeks.

This makes each day counts!

Here is the long-short story to leverage it for your business too:

Little disclaimer before starting, be open mind, don’t skip steps, don’t assume anything.

Do the exercise with intention.

• Step 1: Connect emotionally with your vision

Write down in the present tense your ideal situation by the end of the 12 weeks, how you will feel, what emotions you have, who you are with, where you are, what you are doing, the results you get…

The goal: FEEL THE EMOTION! The stage where you have smashed your goals & you are proud of yourself!

Remember: The stronger your emotional connection, the more motivated you will be to achieve them. Consider how achieving these goals will impact your life and the lives of those around you.

• Step 2: Identify key, specific & measurable goals

To make this vision happen, you have to take action. There is no other way! You can manifest or visualize yourself on a beach in Bali, if you don’t take action, it’s just a dream 😅

So, determine the most critical goals to focus on. Each goal should be clear & quantifiable. For example, "Gain 10 new clients within 6 weeks" or "Lose 5 kilograms in 12 weeks."

→ These are your lag goals. They provide the direction and destination for your efforts.

• Step 3: Create action plans

For each goal, develop a detailed action plan. It’s like your treasure plan!

So you have to define your lag goals. This should include the steps needed to achieve the goal, resources required, and a timeline. Again, each one should be clear & quantifiable.

In this case, lead goals could include the number of sales calls you make each week, the frequency of your social media posts, or the daily caloric intake for your weight loss plan.

→ Lead goals are within your control and are actionable. They are the steps you take on a daily or weekly basis that cumulatively result in achieving your lag goals.

• Step 4: Prioritize tasks

Some goals or tasks will be more important than others.

Prioritize them based on their impact and urgency.

Don’t focus your week on organizing your Mac while your goal is to reach $10k…

To help you: the tasks you are the less comfortable with are the ones who will have the greatness impact on your business. If you keep doing the same thing again & again without seeing results, it’s time for a change.

• Step 5: Establish accountability

Determine how you will track and measure your progress. This could be through weekly reviews, tracking metrics, or having an accountability partner.

For this first 12 Week Year, I have set up all of these 3 strategies. I have designed a specific Notion Dashboard to track automatically all progress, set up a week review on Sunday & my accountability partner Madison 💛

If you are interested in this template, let me know! I will send it to you for free 😊

• Step 6: Schedule regular reviews

Set aside time each week to review your progress, adjust strategies if needed, & plan for the following week.

Like I just told, it’s on Sunday for me & I’m using Cron to time block slots throughout the week (huge advantage: I can connect a specific Notion page with my time block)

• Step 7: Stay flexible & adaptive

If there is something I have learned from 2023, it’s this! Life is sooo unpredictable… You can plan the perfect week, smash all your tasks on your Monday to-do, Tuesday can be full of surprise… Not always a good one.

Set time aside in your week for the unexpected & allocate time for you to do things outside your business.

That’s how I have planned my first quarter of 2024! I hope this will help you as much it helped me!

Let me know if you need any help, I’m always one message away 💛

Stay awesome,

Marlene 🤗