2025 - The 12 Week Year
Master Your Goals in 2025: The Power of the 12 Week Year
There’s nothing like the satisfaction of completing a challenging sprint and crossing that finish line with a sense of accomplishment...
You feel that rush of adrenaline, the pride of having met your goal in a short, intense burst of effort. That feeling is the motivation behind the approach I'm diving into today.
Imagine transforming your entire year into a series of these successful sprints, focusing intensely on just a few key goals at a time.
You might be someone who, like me, has a small addiction to buying planners, crafting elaborate year-long plans, only to have them fall by the wayside by February.
I've been there, stuck in a cycle of setting big goals and not reaching them because life happens.
If you're tired of feeling overwhelmed by your to-do list and frustrated by unmet goals, then it's time to change the game.
In this episode, I share a revolutionary strategy designed for people who thrive on short bursts of focus and energy - perfect for those of us with ADHD or anyone who's struggled with traditional planning methods.
By listening to this episode, you’ll discover how to set realistic, impactful goals that you can achieve within 12 weeks - a method that's already changing my life and could change yours too.
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Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Notion
- ClickUp
- Sandy Milano
- The Gay Birthday Club
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
2025 is a 12 week year and here's why.
Katie McManus:Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach.
Katie McManus:And welcome to the weeniecast.
Katie McManus:I have a little confession to make.
Katie McManus:I have a small addiction that I'm not actually interested in solving because I actually really enjoy it.
Katie McManus:And I think you probably have this addiction as well.
Katie McManus:And I mean, birds of a feather, right?
Katie McManus:We tend to like to stick with people who are similar to us.
Katie McManus:So I'm just going to come out with it.
Katie McManus:I'm addicted to buying planners that I convince myself will fix my life.
Katie McManus:On my desk behind me, I have a stack of these planners and I love them and I'm never getting rid of them.
Katie McManus:And I bop in and out of them.
Katie McManus:And to be honest, none of them have actually fulfilled on that promise of fixing my life.
Katie McManus:And to be fair, none of the marketing for these planners said, Katie McManus, this is going to fix your life.
Katie McManus:But I convinced myself that they would and I am not going to give up on that hope.
Katie McManus:I like a lot of business owners, I'm really, really good at making a plan to plan to create a plan to maybe plan to actually do the thing.
Katie McManus:I love anything that is calendary.
Katie McManus:I think one of the reasons I love planning is because it makes me feel like I'm in control.
Katie McManus:It makes me feel like I own my time.
Katie McManus:It makes me feel like I can control the outcome, the results that I want to go after.
Katie McManus:There are two conflicting belief systems around setting goals.
Katie McManus:One is that once you set a goal and you name it to a bunch of people, you're far more likely to reach that goal because you don't want to disappoint them.
Katie McManus:You don't want to fail at that goal because you don't want people to see that you didn't reach it.
Katie McManus:Now, the other belief system around it is that for a lot of people, naming a goal actually makes you less likely to reach it because just the mere action of sharing that goal with other people gives you enough dopamine to feel like you've already reached it.
Katie McManus:And why am I sharing all this with you?
Katie McManus: to how I am living my life in: Katie McManus:This is a grand experiment, much like all of these journals.
Katie McManus:And I don't know if it's going to work, but I'm really, really excited for it.
Katie McManus:My dear friend Sandy Milano, which if you're ever thinking about buying a house on Cape Cod, she is the best real Estate agent on Cape Cod.
Katie McManus:She's absolutely incredible, has excellent service for her clients.
Katie McManus:She turned me on to this book called the 12 Week Year.
Katie McManus:And something you should know about Sandy is I think she sold around 100 houses last year, something like that.
Katie McManus:It's an insane amount of houses for a real estate agent.
Katie McManus:Like even a fraction of that is an insane amount of houses.
Katie McManus:So when Sandy recommends a system or a book to me, I listen.
Katie McManus:Because if she's doing it, even if I do it in half asset or quarter asset or eighth asset, I know it's going to be effective for me.
Katie McManus:And the whole concept of the 12 week year is that you don't make year long goals, which I have to say I was hesitant about because I love me some year long goals.
Katie McManus:I love some big declarative statements about here's where I'm going to be 12 months from now and blah blah, blah, blah.
Katie McManus:It makes me feel good, it makes me feel powerful, it makes me feel like I've already done it.
Katie McManus:But feeling good and powerful and like you've already done it is not the same as having done it.
Katie McManus:And looking back at my life and at my pile of planners that I still have great hope for, I realize that this actually has never worked for me.
Katie McManus:I go through my journal and I look at the goals that I've set for myself in past years and how ambitious they were and how I did not reach them.
Katie McManus:Usually I forgot about them in like festival February, if I even made it that far.
Katie McManus:Because here's the thing about me is I am not so much a marathoner.
Katie McManus:I do far better with little sprints because that's really my attention span.
Katie McManus:That's the amount of time I can stay really engaged and interested in something.
Katie McManus:And I like getting that early win.
Katie McManus:If I don't get the early win, then I kind of lose steam going for the bigger win.
Katie McManus:So the 12 week year has you do away with those big year long goals and you may be thinking, okay, well 12 weeks, so you probably break the year up into like 12 week batches, which is quarters, right Katie?
Katie McManus:No, actually no, that's not how it goes.
Katie McManus:The whole premise of the 12 week year is that you do things in 12 week spurts and that's it.
Katie McManus:And you don't think beyond that.
Katie McManus:You identify smaller areas of your life that you want to see a dramatic improvement over the next 12 weeks and you work on that and that alone.
Katie McManus:And the reason you don't stack them, the reason you don't break it up into here are the four quarters of the year.
Katie McManus:Brian P.
Katie McManus:Moran and Michael Lennington argue that we're just not good fortune tellers, which I have to agree.
Katie McManus:I'm not a good fortune teller.
Katie McManus:There's a reason why I don't sell psychic for readings.
Katie McManus:How many times have I made plans for the whole year?
Katie McManus:And then something dramatic happened in March that changed everything.
Katie McManus: For instance, in: Katie McManus:Thank God she made it.
Katie McManus:But of course, that was a very extreme expensive week.
Katie McManus:So that threw off some of my financial goals for the year.
Katie McManus:And that's okay.
Katie McManus:I was happy to make the adjustment.
Katie McManus:But it also kicked off me changing my mind about living in Philadelphia, which meant that I moved, which again, was not in the plans.
Katie McManus:So in the first quarter of that year, everything about my life had changed.
Katie McManus:If I were trying to stick to the 12 month goal, how easy do you think it would be for me to stick to the 12 month goal?
Katie McManus:If you're guessing that it was probably pretty hard, you're right.
Katie McManus:And actually, I didn't stick to the goal.
Katie McManus:I didn't stick to the plan.
Katie McManus:I remade the plan.
Katie McManus:And then I remade the plan again when other things changed in my life.
Katie McManus:And then I remade the plan again when other things changed.
Katie McManus:And by the time I got to the end of the year, I hadn't reached anywhere near the goal that I'd had.
Katie McManus:When we set up a year, we with a whole plan for how every single month is gonna go and how every quarter is gonna go.
Katie McManus:Not only do we not create time and space and flexibility for those major life events that are going to happen because we're human and that's how life goes to kind of things up and change things, but we also activate that part in our brain that says, oh, well, you know, this is the goal for the whole year.
Katie McManus:I don't get it done this time, I can get it done next time.
Katie McManus:If I don't get it done this time, I can get it done next week or next month or next quarter.
Katie McManus:And it's kind of like that thing where you tell yourself, well, I kind of want to lose 20 pounds.
Katie McManus:Okay, cool.
Katie McManus:So if I want to lose 20 pounds, I probably need to start a diet and I need to start exercising.
Katie McManus:Cool.
Katie McManus:All right, well, today's a Thursday, right?
Katie McManus:Thursdays aren't good to start things on.
Katie McManus:So what I'll do is I will Start my diet on Monday, because Monday is a very natural start for something like that.
Katie McManus:And then I'll also start going to the gym on Monday.
Katie McManus:And then of course, like, yeah, maybe you start your diet on Monday, but like something happens in your life and you don't get to the gym.
Katie McManus:Well, okay, well, I didn't start going to the gym today, so I'll start going to the gym next week.
Katie McManus:We get so precious about it starting at the right time.
Katie McManus:And because it's like this big amorphous goal, we think, okay, well, there's always next week and there's always next week and there's always next week.
Katie McManus:And before we know it, it's been a year and we've like started a diet 17 times.
Katie McManus:We've been to the gym eight times.
Katie McManus:And if you do the math on your, on your monthly membership, those were very, very expensive solo trips to the gym.
Katie McManus:What would the difference be if you just started by eating three more servings of vegetables on that Thursday?
Katie McManus:What would be different if you said, okay, well, I don't have time to go to the gym today, but I have to take my dog for a walk anyway.
Katie McManus:I'll just make, make it a longer walk.
Katie McManus:I'll do some lunges while I'm out there.
Katie McManus:Imagine the difference it would have if you just started on the day you imagined.
Katie McManus:I want to do this instead of doing the, oh, well, I'll do it later and I'll do it later and I'll do it later.
Katie McManus:You're just doing it already.
Katie McManus:It's just naturally already happening.
Katie McManus:And while sure it's not a proper visit to the gym, say you do 40 lunges and you do it three times a week while you take your dog for a walk.
Katie McManus:Imagine how much stronger your legs are going to be after doing that for three weeks versus you holding out for, oh well, lunges have to happen at the gym.
Katie McManus:It only counts as a workout if I'm in that building with those walls and other people who are wearing too tight clothing and sweating and also feeling uncomfortable.
Katie McManus:One of the things that I love about the 12 week gear is that it doesn't prioritize the result.
Katie McManus:I mean, it does like the whole thing.
Katie McManus:The whole system is designed so you can get the result, but it doesn't focus success on you gaining the result.
Katie McManus:It focuses success on you taking the actions that are required for you to reach that result.
Katie McManus:One of my superpowers, along with my buying of planners that I have really, really high hopes will solve all the problems in my Life is I'll make all or nothing plans.
Katie McManus:I will make workout routines that are all or nothing.
Katie McManus:I have to follow the routine exactly or else it's a complete failure.
Katie McManus:I will create social media plans for myself and my business that I have to follow perfectly or else it's a failure, right?
Katie McManus:And I will make graphs, I will go into Notion or ClickUp and I will create all of these project management setups so that I can track how perfectly I do everything.
Katie McManus:I will brought out analog style.
Katie McManus:One of my favorite things is to take some graph paper and if you also like graph paper, or even better dot grid paper to plot out how perfectly you're going to run your life in the future.
Katie McManus:Even though there's no proof that you've ever been able to follow a schedule that you've made for yourself, ever for a day in your life.
Katie McManus:Welcome to the family.
Katie McManus:You're in good company.
Katie McManus:I think we're pretty fun to hang out with.
Katie McManus:I am the queen of creating these plans and then not following the plan.
Katie McManus:I'm the queen of drawing out the perfect week long schedule and then not following it and then just doing it again the next week and the next week and the next week.
Katie McManus:For funsies obviously, because it doesn't serve any other purpose.
Katie McManus:The 12 week year is not about that.
Katie McManus:The 12 week year has you assign yourself the different activities that you need to do every day, every week and every month and even some one off projects.
Katie McManus:And you either do it or you don't.
Katie McManus:If you don't do it, you don't throw out the whole 12 week plan.
Katie McManus:You just chart it, you just track it so that occasionally when you check in on your progress, you're able to see, okay, cool, I've done 60% of the things that I told myself I would do.
Katie McManus:Am I getting the results that I want?
Katie McManus:Because if you're already getting the results that you you want that'll help you reach that goal, amazing.
Katie McManus:Maybe you didn't need to do the other 40% of the stuff, right?
Katie McManus:But if you're doing 60% and you're getting halfway there, it's meant to light a fire under your ass to actually go and do the other 40% because it'll help you reach your goal at the end of the 12 weeks.
Katie McManus:It's not an all or nothing plan.
Katie McManus:It's meant for you to live your life like an experiment, to run your business like an experiment experiment.
Katie McManus:And I'm going to say this like I did well in science class.
Katie McManus:I didn't.
Katie McManus:But any Good scientist will tell you that while you're running an experiment, you have to track the data.
Katie McManus:You have to track every single step that you took.
Katie McManus:You have to explain the metrics, because otherwise you won't have a solid conclusion at the end of the experiment.
Katie McManus:You won't know what worked.
Katie McManus:So I'm really excited for the 12 week year and this first little round of it that I'm doing.
Katie McManus:Not only because it's having me focus in on the core actions that I need to take to reach these goals, but it's also having me focus in specifically on a select few goals that I want to work on in the first portion of this year.
Katie McManus:Because just like I get all or nothing with my activities, I also get all or nothing about all the things that I want to accomplish.
Katie McManus:Accomplish.
Katie McManus:I want to sell out my program.
Katie McManus:I want to write a nonfiction book about your favorite self.
Katie McManus:And if you want to learn more about the favorite self model, you can go and listen to a little taster of it in episode 100.
Katie McManus:But I want to write a book about that.
Katie McManus:I also want to write a fantasy novel, you know, and I have an idea for a really good one and I should probably start writing that before I forget about it or I lose the juice around the idea.
Katie McManus:There are a couple programs that I want to launch and have been massively successful.
Katie McManus:Obviously the Gay Birthday Club, my nonprofit, I want to get that up and running.
Katie McManus:I want to have an amazing first annual event.
Katie McManus:Like as.
Katie McManus:As a term, first annual doesn't really make sense because annual is yearly.
Katie McManus:But anyway, there are so many goals that I have and yet when I try to go for all of them, I don't reach any of them.
Katie McManus:I know this when I work with clients and they come in with a menu of services that they are excited to sell in their business.
Katie McManus:My advice to them is sell one.
Katie McManus:A confused buyer never buys.
Katie McManus:And you are your marketing team.
Katie McManus:You are the only person who's going to be posting and sharing about these services.
Katie McManus:For one, you're not going to do any of them credit by trying to market all of them.
Katie McManus:You're not going to be able to build a case for why someone should buy one program when you're trying to build a case for three different ones.
Katie McManus:And also the people who are following you, they're not seeing every single post that you share, right?
Katie McManus:So they're just going to get confused.
Katie McManus:Oh, she does this.
Katie McManus:Oh, now she does this.
Katie McManus:Oh, now she does this other thing.
Katie McManus:Oh, now she.
Katie McManus:Now she's back to doing that.
Katie McManus:First thing again, they're not going to know how you're useful to them.
Katie McManus:They're not going to start being able to build a story for why they should hire you if you keep changing the market on them.
Katie McManus:Right?
Katie McManus:Just like in how we run our businesses, this is true in our lives.
Katie McManus:If we're trying to do too many things, it just does not work.
Katie McManus:There's this great book called the Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.
Katie McManus:I cannot recommend it enough.
Katie McManus:If you're looking for a book to listen to or to read.
Katie McManus:And even after knowing this book and referring to it for years and years and years, I still try to do this.
Katie McManus:I try to change all of my habits all at once.
Katie McManus:It just does not work that way.
Katie McManus:One of the examples he uses in the book is he shares about how he had this habit of getting up in like mid afternoon at work and going down to the little cafeteria at his workplace and getting a cookie, which, I mean, if you're having a cookie every single day, probably not that healthy, right?
Katie McManus:And so he started trying to change the habit.
Katie McManus:And so, so he would change like the type of snack he'd go for.
Katie McManus:He'd try not to go down to the cafeteria at all.
Katie McManus:He'd try to have a little snack at his desk.
Katie McManus:Throughout this whole process of trying to change this habit, what he realized, and he, he did this through trial and error, is that it wasn't actually the cookie that he wanted.
Katie McManus:What he wanted was the banter, the camaraderie that he'd experienced when he was down at the cafeteria around that time.
Katie McManus:And he'd get to check in with other humans, his coworkers, who were all, you know, otherwise working in their own little cubicles or offices.
Katie McManus:He needed that injection of socialization, you know, and the cookie he found was actually just an excuse his subconscious had come up with to get him to that point in that place where he could see these people and have a little mental break from his work.
Katie McManus:Now imagine figuring that out while you're also trying to go to the gym for an hour every single day.
Katie McManus:And you're also trying to work on your novel, and you're also trying to start a business.
Katie McManus:And you're also trying to do this, and you're also trying to do that.
Katie McManus:Be really hard to do that trial and error and see what parts actually work and don't work for you in each area of that.
Katie McManus:And so for full transparency, I have four different goals that I'm working on right now.
Katie McManus:They do fold in together.
Katie McManus:And so I'm going to actually be sharing as I go through this 12 week year, this first little iteration of this, how it's going and what I like about it and what I don't like about it.
Katie McManus:And of course like the parts that I struggle with and the parts that are really making me better as a business owner.
Katie McManus:So the four areas that I'm working on is I have an income goal.
Katie McManus:I want to sign a certain dollar amount in new business in the next 12 weeks.
Katie McManus:Now to support that, I have a whole list of actions that I've broken down into the day, the week, the month.
Katie McManus:And then of course there are some action items that are just one time things.
Katie McManus:Now another one is that I'm actually doing a full rebrand and I'm already halfway through this.
Katie McManus:So like the visual stuff is the thing that needs to happen next.
Katie McManus:And of course all this will fold into the work that I'm doing for this income goal.
Katie McManus:The third goal is I want to sell a certain amount of tickets to an event that I'm launching in March.
Katie McManus:And you'll be getting more information about this as we release the information to the public.
Katie McManus:I'm really excited about it, but that goal in particular, if I'm able to reach even a fraction of it, will set me up to reach the goal that I plan on setting for myself, which I know is kind of cheating.
Katie McManus:It's not really the 12 week year kind of thing.
Katie McManus:But I'm doing this intentionally so that I am more likely to succeed at that next level goal for this big project.
Katie McManus:And again, I am being being vague on purpose because we haven't announced yet.
Katie McManus:And then finally, I do have a personal fitness goal tied to this and it's a little pedantic to explain, so I don't want to bore you with it.
Katie McManus:And those are the only things I'm allowing myself to work on in the next 12 weeks.
Katie McManus:Do I want to start, slash, finish my books?
Katie McManus:Absolutely.
Katie McManus:Are there a gazillion other things that I would also like to add to this list?
Katie McManus:Yeah, sure.
Katie McManus:But I know that if I don't focus on just a few things, then I'm not going to make progress in any of them.
Katie McManus:And for the sake of changing how I do work so I can be more effective in my work, I need to do this at a smaller scale so that I can really track what works and what doesn't work.
Katie McManus:Now this is something that I'm rolling out to my clients if they so choose to also follow a 12 week year.
Katie McManus:So if you're curious about what that would look like, if you want support in building your business anyway, then I invite you to book a generate income strategy call with me.
Katie McManus:Because it's easier together, or so the book says.
Katie McManus:It's easier with accountability, and with people who can both call you on your bullshit, keep you inspired, and also share how it's going for them.
Katie McManus:That camaraderie really does keep you going.
Katie McManus:And if you want to book a call to learn more about any of my programs, you can go to weeniecast.com strategycall and if you have any questions about how this goes, please do write them in the reviews for the weeniecast, we look at every single one.
Katie McManus:And if, while you're there, you could also give a recommendation for what you like about the podcast, we would really appreciate that.
