Book Review: The 12 Week Year (Pt. 1)

VO: Get ready for your semi-regular dose of random ideas from the guys at Codelation. We like to talk about big ideas companies that are winning, and those that aren't along with current events in our crazy world of software startups. So come along with Erick and Josh, who challenge you to think big, start small and turn your ideas into something on this episode of, from idea to done.

Josh: Hey everyone, I'm Josh.

Erick: and I'm Erick and today's idea is work efficiency. And this comes from a book that you were reading last week when you were traveling. What book are we talking about?

Josh: Book we're talking about is the 12 Week Year and the tagline for the book is get more done in 12 weeks and others do in 12 months.

Erick: That's kind of, that's ambitious. And so what are some of the bigger ideas of this book?

Josh: Absolutely. Um, the first idea that I got out of the book was to discard annual thinking. So in the concept is in January, December, it looks a long ways away. So we begin the year with really big goals. And at the end of January, we're slightly behind at the end of March. We're a little bit more behind, but we're not worried because there's plenty of time to catch up between March and December. The second big takeaway was periodization. That's a mouthful it's principles are focused concentration and overload on a specific skill or discipline. And where it came from was it started in athletic training techniques to help increase performance. So the athlete would focus on one kind of grouping of skills every four to six weeks, and then moved on to the next one,

Erick: Kind of like shooting a hundred free throws before practice or.

Josh: Doing the same thing over and over and over.

Erick: Muscle memory for your brain basically. And so you liked this book actually so much that you bought everyone on our staff copies and I don't read a ton and I'm more of a forget thinking and reading about ideas. Let's take some action. And so I did read it though, cause cause you're my boss and you told me it. And I related to it, it had a quote that I really liked. It said an ounce of action is worth a ton of theory. And again, I'm about taking action. What are we going to take away from this book to our team of co-owner to help us move forward?

Josh: Well, you start with a 12 week plan. Spoiler alert, Erick, if it's in the title, it's not a spoiler alert.

Erick: Fine. Hi, back to the takeaway.

Josh: Okay. Okay. So you start with the end in mind at the end of 12 weeks, what do you want to have achieved? So this is really nothing new, but for example, you may want to have a personal goal of losing 10 pounds and a business goal of closing a hundred thousand dollars in new business.

Erick: So we've all had like new year's resolutions and that's kinda what it sounds like to me, but what what's the difference in this?

Josh: The real difference is you're compacting. You're not, not trying to go through a full year to compacting it down to 12 weeks. You need to check off 85% of the checklist items on list and you're going to be really successful the way you do it is you need to make your goals specific and measurable state the want and a positive over a negative statement, ensure that they're realistic, maybe a little bit of a stretch, but still realistic assign accountability and be time bound to your goals.

Erick: And, and I like this actually, cause it's kinda different. I have, I only got through part one so far. So what I'd actually like to do, I'd like to just to have a followups episode explaining, you know, how we use this book to actually move the needle for our business and by my calculations, it's Friday afternoon and I've worked 12 weeks already this year. Is it, is it time to go home?

Josh: Well, I've hoped you've worked more than 12 weeks already this year Erick

Erick: It's August fair enough. Editing until five.

Josh: Thank you for listening to this episode. The first in our mega series, if you know a startup that could use our random advice and thoughts, have them subscribe and leave a review on iTunes.