Читать книгу The 12 Week Year for Writers - Michael Lennington - Страница 26

When you use the 12 Week Year to plan and manage your writing, you will write more prolifically, consistently, and happily, with less stress. This is because the 12 Week Year will help you overcome the most common obstacles writers face in getting their writing done. Recall the challenges I listed in Chapter 1. As the 12 Week Year Writer's Map illustrates (see Table 2.1), the tools and disciplines embedded in the 12 Week Year address all of these.

From here onward, your new planning horizon is the 12 Week Year, followed by another 12 Week Year, followed by another, and so on. Each 12 Week Year will stand on its own, allowing you to redefine your year around the goals that matter most to you right now. The very structure of a 12 Week Year will help you maintain energy and focus. Instead of looking way off in time and then waiting for the end of the year to provide a sense of urgency, operating within a 12 Week Year ensures that you won't lose track of what you're supposed to do today and provides the “end of year” sense of urgency to every week. Twelve weeks is long enough to get things done (it's about a semester of school, for example), but short enough that you will never lose sight of the finish line. Procrastination thrives when our deadlines lie far in the future. Productivity thrives when our deadlines approach, when our sense of urgency and motivation allow us to eliminate needless activity and to stay focused on what matters most.

The 12 Week Year provides faster and more useful feedback about your execution. If you miss your goals under an annual planning scenario, it's taken you a whole year to figure out that you need to do better. With the 12 Week Year you will know quickly if you're falling behind your schedule – you can't have many bad weeks and still hit your goals for a 12 Week Year. This feedback, delivered more frequently, will help you focus and stay on track better than any annual plan.

Table 2.1 The 12 Week Year Writer's Map

What	Why	When	How	12 Week Year Disciplines
Crafting Your Vision	Provides emotional connection to actionsProvides energy that increases commitment, motivationProvides direction for planning and actionHelps you prioritize between competing goalsHelps stakeholders to understand/support youExpands your sense of the possible	Create at the start of 12 Week Year installationReview weekly and during 13th weekUpdate as inspired	Have-Do-Be exerciseAspirational VisionNear-term VisionWriter's Vision	Vision Chapter 3
Creating Your 12 Week Plan	Clarifies prioritiesDefines strategy, goals, tacticsDefines action plans for each weekIncreases focusPrevents overwhelm	At the beginning of each 12 Week Year make required adjustments over the 12 weeks as needed	Create 12 Week PlanSet 12 Week GoalsIdentify tactics for each goal	Planning Chapter 4
Aligning Time with Your Plan	Allocates necessary time to the most important thingsHelps others support you by honoring your writing timeScheduling provides consistency and rhythm for writingScheduling ensures you have capacity to carry out writing plans	Set up Model Week at start of 12 Week YearAdjust time blocks weekly as required by emerging events/issuesFocus during each writing session	Create Model WeekSchedule blocks for writing, buffer, and breakout timeSet time blocks for other events, meetings, and commitments	Time Use Chapter 5
Managing Your Writing Process and Getting Your Writing Done	Ties daily actions to 12 Week GoalAdjusts quickly to stay on track with goalLeverages peer supportIncreases learning and improves problem solvingProvides encouragement and a sense of progressImproves ability to hold yourself accountableAdvances you toward your writing goals and vision	Daily and weekly	Work from a written weekly planScore weekly executionTrack weekly progress toward goalsAttend Writing/Accountability MeetingsFollow weekly execution RoutineEmbrace your Writer’s Mindset	Process Control, Scorekeeping, and Time Use Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8

The 12 Week Year will also improve your focus. When you only have twelve weeks to get something done, and you can easily count the number of days and weeks you have left to finish something, your focus on getting things done will sharpen dramatically. During a 12 Week Year, you can't put things off until later; you can't imagine things will magically get done at the end of the year. In a 12 Week Year, things need to get done now.

On the flip side, the 12 Week Year is less constricting and more flexible than an annual plan. Every 12 weeks you get to reset your goals and your plan. If you get halfway through an annual plan before realizing it isn't working, it can be demoralizing and hard to figure out how to salvage the year. But if you fail to meet a goal in this 12 Week Year, you haven't blown a whole calendar year, and you're ready for a fresh start right away with the next 12 Week Year.

As we move ahead and dive into the details, I will warn you: there are no shortcuts – reading this book will not automatically eliminate all your writing problems. But once you have read it you will have a set of tools that, with time and effort, will reliably help you work your way around the inevitable obstacles that all writers must deal with on their journeys.