As mentioned the other day, this week I'm learning about the 12 Week Year approach with the intention of beginning my own first 12 Week Year next week on Monday, June 10th.

Today I read a big chunk of the book which clarified uncertainties I had the other day, and made me more excited about trying it.

Before I started reading the book I imagined part of the point of the 12 Week Year was going to be something like the promise of the four hour work week. Like, condense all of your work into twelve weeks and then follow your bliss or whatever the other nine months of the year. That doesn't seem to be the point at all, though, or even a fringe benefit.

Instead the book is very much focused on excellence, and intends for you to keep performing year-round, but at a much higher level with ~4 times greater results. Not by working more hours, though, but by working with more focus within a more managable and predictable time frame than people usually do when goal-setting and planning annually.

This is super-appealing to me as an AuDHDer. They make a great case for adopting a 12 week year so you have less time to procrastinate, thinking you'll catch up later before the year ends. Instead they say you'll get all the benefits of a year-end push plus the excitement of a new year coming and the opportunity to start fresh with the added sense of urgency inherent in a condensed period of time where every week and every day matters. Instead of having a bunch of different objectives and goals spread out over a year diffusing everything and making your efforts all scattered and complex, you get to really home in on 1-3 goals and relatively few tactics specific to achieving just that one or two or three goals, giving you more of a sense of confidence and clarity. For me, this is awesome to block out side-projects that FEEL productive or that I can rationalize as productive, but that are actually diluting my efforts and spreading me too thin so that I start a lot and make progress on a lot, but don't actually finish, let alone get to the marketing and selling step.

One of the best things about this focused approach is I can see an end in sight, but it's far enough in the future that I can actually build up to a measurably-rewarding success with a financial pay-off.

It's not just the length of time and idle "promise", or enticement, that significantly better sales can result from taking this approach, it's the confidence building (on top of other confidence-builders and permission-granters I've larned / received in the past ~5 years. They say this thing I've learned before and believe to be true: knowing a thing is not the same as doing a thing; executing what you know is the key.

Maybe that sounds like "just do it" Nike advice, oversimplifying what is actually very hard. But that's not it. They say it IS hard -- that's why so few people do the stuff they know needs to be done to get what they supposedly want. There is this other piece they highlight that really stands out for me:

"Our experience has shown that people know how to double or triple their income just by consistently applying what they already know. Despite this, people continue to chase new ideas thinking that the next idea is the one that will magically make it all better."

THAT to me is the confidence-builder I need. The same thing I've been saying to myself for a few years now, getting louder and louder: I KNEW WHAT TO DO IN 2001. I WAS MAKING MONEY DOING THAT THING, AND IF I'D FOCUSED ON THAT ONE THING FIRST, I'D BE FUCKING RICH.

While I can't say that I regret the mistakes I've made, I think when I share my story a year or three down the line, people will regret this misstep for me on my behalf, like watching a horse they bet on lose a race by insanely just galloping off the track into the parking lot and jumping over cars before toppling over and crushing their jockey half-to-death.

Anyway. This book -- that quote/"promise" -- is the confirmation and permission and confidence-builder I've been needing.  I *do* know what to do. And it *will* work.

Looking around at all the people who could be doing the same thing but aren't or haven't and listening to people who'd say "oh well anyone can do that if it was that *easy* (it's not exactly easy, but I digress) then everyone would be doing it" is bullshit spoken and thought by non-doers who, like me, have a hard time accepting that the main reason most people aren't doing the great things they could be doing (or just losing ten pounds, or whatever) requires a special golden key of knowledge that only a chosen few have access to, or is more complicated than putting in consistent focused habitual effort to doing it. But really, that is it: committing to doing it and then doing it is really all that separates most of the achievers of a lot of stuff from the non-achievers.

It reminds me of another thing I heard from a YouTube writer guy (Kendall ... name escapes me now ... I'll look it up) addressing the common imposter syndrome people have, specifically writers not feeling like they are "real" writers, or whatever. I don't remember everything he said, but it did really help me and stick out, the point he made about acknowledging yourself if you've had anything published -- anything at all -- and that NOT EVERYBODY HAS THAT. Yes -- anybody can write a book or whatever these days -- but here is the big thing you have to give yourself credit for: NOT EVERYBODY DOES. Everybody *could* write a short story; NOT EVERYBODY DOES. And it is that -- the writing -- that makes you a writer and sets you apart from people who COULD but DO NOT.

All of this feeds into an awareness that's been very helpful to me in combatting feelings of redundancy or feeling like it is worthless to "waste time" doing things thousands of thousands of people around the world already do (and do BETTER than I do), whether it's playing piano or blogging or vlogging or selling videos of my big boobs; I started constricting the circle encompassing all the people I was counting, narrowing it down to JUST MY NEIGHBORHOOD, or around a half to one mile radius. Within that circle, how many people know how to produce videos? How many people play piano? How many people know the words I know by heart and are willing to sing them or speak them as ministry? How many have stories and reassuringly embarrassing true confessions they can present in a readable format? Even if there are a few others within this restricted territory, it is not enough to be redundant or worthless or cancel all but one of us out as disqualified.

The whole big point is yeah -- a whole bunch of people are *capable* of doing "it" (whatever it may be ... name just about anything), and even *know how* to do "it". BUT THEY DON'T. Most people don't. So I don't have to question what I know as being the source of the problem or doubt whether what I know will pay off (I already have evidence -- years of it -- that IT DOES). I don't have to feel embarrassed to invest three months of focused effort on doing the thing, worrying about how nobody will believe me or have faith in my work. I can just do it. For three months. And trust that it will pay off enough in that period of time to speak for itself (if these guys are right, double or triple ... oh shit I just realized my goal is actually to make ten times more each week than I've been averaging for the past year ... but hey, it's less-than-doubling my best weeks so I'm sticking with that as a goal).

I want to explore the tendency more to pursue a different new magical idea or trick rather than do what they know is guaranteed or at least highly-probable to work: the way we are wired, a lack of gratitude and appreciated for old tech ... and what I think is a spiritual hunger for some divine power to select us for a supernaturally-charged lucky break or blessing or intervention.

The authors do address some of that wiring (our amygdalas vs or prefrontal cortex) and our desire to stay comfortable / resist change. But I think there are other wishes we have for approval and teamwork, even if the teamwork comes in the form of a disembodied force lending a helping ethereal hand.

Getting back to the AuDHD thing: another big benefit to the 12 week approach they talk about is being able to recognize and reward yourself more frequently than once-a-year (and within a time frame where you're more capable of sustaining high performance deserving of that). I also love the idea of doing this alone, but with the assurance from the authors that one of the effective components of this approach is that you won't suffer this long-lasting loss of self-esteem if you *don't* achieve your goals or perform up to the standard you wished. You get to start another 12 week year very soon and give yourself another chance!

It really is making me excited to dangle the lure of a whole different new fresh season with an entirely different focus waiting for me at the end of summer. I love the two goals I've set for myself, and how meeting them will fuel these more-fun more-adventurous different projects.

I think it will also be helpful to be armed with a get-out-of-social-free card that has a not-too-distant final date to hand to people. Ahh ... I can't. I'm working on a couple three-month projects to meet two big goals by Labor Day, so I'm not doing anything else until at least sometime after that.

And then I can't wait to just be gone for like ten days or so before starting my next 12 week year.