It’s 2024 and this time I’m doing neither yearly goals nor themes. I find themes to be too vague to be useful: they don’t provide enough structure or motivation for my needs. My old yearly goals worked perfectly before I got cancer, but now I can’t commit to a full year of goals (my brain just won’t let me). So I’m trying something new this time: the twelve week year. The idea is to treat each quarter as a new year, with all that entails.

I mapped out the first 13 weeks (from the 31st of December to the 30th of March) in my Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal, each week on two pages. On the left are the days of the week and on the right is my set of tasks for the week. The list of tasks is divided into two columns, and each column is divided into categories. The left column is for categories and tasks that vary widely from week to week: blogging, general tasks, various courses and challenges I’m taking. The right column is for my permanent categories that happen every week in the quarter: health, reading, connections, meditation and journaling.

The health category tracks fitness and health related tasks (on a given week it will have checkboxes for running, swimming and gym sessions for example, as well as reminders to go to the dentist or get my blood pressure checked). The reading category is for where I want to be with my reading in a given week (halfway through book x, 30 pages into book y). Connections is something I added after reading Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism and it’s been well worth doing: I call or meet up with 2-4 friends every week. Messaging doesn’t count, only phone calls, zoom calls, or physical meetups. If there’s one habit I’d recommend picking up in 2024 it’s this one. Meditate and Journal are just tracking locations for my meditation and journaling sessions.

I then set out goals in various categories for the entire “12 week year”, as if it was a full year. Each of these will be evaluated at the end of the 13 weeks, and a complete new set of goals will be set for next quarter. The goals are all SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound. Unlike themes there’s a possibility of not achieving all my goals, but that’s also something worth learning and carrying on to the next “year”.

So for instance under my health category for the next “year” is to get back to a 5k running base and an 8k long run (I’ve had a break in running for a few weeks due to illness and travel). If at the end of March I’m only at a 7k long run that’s not the end of the world, it just means that I need to take that into account when planning my next 12 weeks.

I then break down the goals into tasks that go into the weekly page. Each week I look at my goals, calculate where I am and where I want to be by the end of the week and fill out the weekly planning page accordingly. I use the calendar side of the page to block out time sensitive things or things that provide useful context (days of the week where I work from home and those where I work from the office, rainy days, holidays, etc).

To be clear: I don’t block the tasks for all the “year” in advance, but rather on a week by week basis. Only the goals for the entire 12 week period are planned in advance. The goals themselves are realistic, and many of them are broken into “base goals” and “stretch goals” much like in Kickstarter. At the last week of the quarter I set aside time to review and “shutdown” the quarter and plan and set up the new one coming up. If I end up not liking the weekly page setup, if there’s a goal that just didn’t work for me, if there’s something new in my life I can easily take it into account without feeling like I’ve “wasted” precious planning time or I’m bailing out on my plans.

So, if you’re unsure on how to plan your year, I suggest just planning the next 12 or 13 weeks. It may just work for you.