🗓 The 12-Week Year: 6-Week Update

When you remember, at the end of last year, I shared the idea of the 12-week year and committed to trying it out. Today, my 7th week started, and I want to share my experience about the process.

First, I did an exercise and formulated my ✨ vision ✨. What I want to achieve in general and what I want to achieve in the mid-term. That was nice and indeed allowed me to fantasize about how my life will look if I do everything I have planned 📈.

Then, I chose topics that will bring me closer to my vision. For the first 12 weeks, I chose to — improve my 🇩🇪 German speaking and start developing my Instagram account. Those are strategic goals. Then, I chose tactics — how will I try to achieve that?

Let’s abandon specifics, but I can tell you that indeed, in these 6 weeks, I have done more than I did toward these goals the whole last year (because last year I was mostly dreaming about it and not doing it).

✅ What I did so far
* I practice German regularly (5 times a week I do the Üben app, 1 time — a 30-minute talk with a native).
* I released 5 episodes of a podcast in German, "6 Minuten Wöchentlich". This way, I practice writing, and then I check it against ChatGPT and learn from my mistakes.
* I relaunched my Instagram in Ukrainian (+ polished my profile there).
* Shot and edited 7 reels and 3 posts (already got 20+ subscribers from reels only).
* I kind of created a content plan (not a plan, but a list with ideas to pick from).

✚ What I achieved besides
* I feel I am more confident in sporadic German conversations.
* I learned how to work with sound using Audacity; I can edit my podcast myself.
* I learned how to edit videos using CapCut. I already used that for work once.
* I am learning how to create more engaging reels.
* Recently, I added some health tactics to the weeks — drink more water and meditate for 5 minutes, 5 times a week.

💡 Other insights
* I now know that any tasks, even small tasks, still mean you need to dedicate time to them. Shoot and edit a reel? 1.5h. Write and edit text for a 6-minute podcast? 1h. Record and edit a podcast? 1h.
* I think for the next 12 weeks, I will also add work-related goals. Anyhow, I work 8h a day. Why not structure my progress there and celebrate achievements?
* It’s useful to reflect on the past week (I do it on Monday) and write down what you can improve this week, changing your weekly plan a little. For example — split tasks into smaller ones (create a reel scenario, shoot a reel, edit a reel).
* Yes, it’s difficult to combine all these new tasks with regular work and life. But having them recorded, knowing that I want to set a checkmark there, makes me do them 💪.
* It’s fine to NOT do everything that was planned. It’s more important to reflect on why and adjust for the future.

👍 I’m going to continue, and let’s see what I will achieve in the next 6 weeks. So far, I’m happy about this experiment. When you want to bring more strategy to your life, I would encourage you to try this framework out.