Week 2 of the 12 Week Year
Ok, so Week 2 of the 12 Week Year did not go so well. I guess I’ll let the numbers speak for themselves. I’ll talk about that…and what you do when you realize you have too much to do in a week (or a day). But first, this post is part of a series as I go through the 12 Week Year to reach two goals for my business. I’m working towards a (tiny) income goal and a (tiny) book sales goal for this first 12 weeks. If you missed week 0 and week 1, go check them out and then come back here!
Week 2 Score
Tactics:
- Record Ch 2 story 0%
- Create freebie for ch 2 0%
- Write ch 1 0%
- Create Amazon Pre-sale page 0%
- Record Ch 1 story 0%
- Pray for book 5x/week 80%
- Accounting Day 100%
- Review Sway Portal for opportunities and apply 100%
- Weekly RW newsletter 100%
- RW blog post 100%
- FB Live: Weird Bible Questions 0%
Weekly Execution Score: 44%
Lag Indicators (If you forgot, those are measures against the goal itself, such as “pounds lost”):
- Books Sold to Date: 1
- Chapters Completed to Date: 1
- Revenue: 0*
- Paycheck: 0*
*Note, I actually did bring in some revenue during this period, but Amazon paid my old bank account, and so I had to transfer it over. So I’ll count it when it actually hits my Profit First bank accounts.
Lead Indicators (measures of activities that contribute towards the goal):
- Weekly Execution (see above): 44%
- Products or Sponsored Content Created: 0
- Interviews/Guest Posts Scheduled: 0
- RW Email List Size: 163
- Chapter Freebie Conversion Rate: N/A (not yet released)
- Accountability Post: 0
- Affiliate Sales: $7.81
- Ad Revenue: $0.16
What I Learned This Week:
Part of your plan has to include the other stuff that’s going on in your life. That’s especially true for me since I’m working the 12 Week Year for this side business while working my full-time job, leading a ministry, and more. I had all these tactics on my list for week 2, but I didn’t take into account the fact that I was scheduled to teach a class for two days. That means prep time, commute time, a longer work week…I absolutely love teaching for School of Ministry. It’s my favorite thing. But at the end of a work week + teaching weekend, I was wiped. I had nothing left. Instead of knocking out tactics, I took a break. I read a book that I needed to review anyways. And I slept. And it was okay.
What do you do when you realize you have too much to do?
If it’s early in the week, hit PAUSE and rewrite your plan. Seriously. if you can get ahead of things and do this, just…change. the. plan.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Too much to do? Hit PAUSE and rewrite your plan. via @TheCafeScholar” quote=”Too much to do? Hit PAUSE and rewrite your plan. “]
If you’re already way into it, leave your plan alone. Don’t worry about it. Take a break when you need one. Judge your energy levels, do what you can, go after the low-hanging fruit. For me, that meant knocking out a bunch of the odds and ends tasks off my list because I knew my brain was too toasty for the big ones.
And then…this is really important. Do your weekly review. Make your schedule for next week. You’ll obviously need to move some of those missed tasks forward…but don’t try to squeeze it all into next week. Learn the lesson, review your calendar, and only put on your list what you will actually be able to do. Adjust your plan to spread the rest of your tasks out.
This is different than just deciding to be lazy for a week. This is the week you realized you planned too much to do. So just learn the lesson – don’t plan so much next week. That’s what the review is for: to figure out what worked and what didn’t. So if your plan didn’t work because you planned more things than you had time for, or if your plan didn’t work because some tasks took longer than you thought, just…do it differently next time. When you make that assessment and change your plan accordingly, the “too much to do” week wasn’t a waste, because you learned something (about yourself, your workload, etc) that will help you succeed going forward.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”This is different than just deciding to be lazy for a week. This is the week you realized you planned too much to do. So just learn the lesson – don’t plan so much next week. That’s what the review is for. via @TheCafeScholar” quote=”This is different than just deciding to be lazy for a week. This is the week you realized you planned too much to do. So just learn the lesson – don’t plan so much next week. That’s what the review is for.”]
Changes to My Plan:
Obviously, I had to reassign the things I missed last week. I did NOT reassign them for week 3. Instead, I spread out the tasks. I also realized that some of my weekly tactics were too large…not too large to get done, but too large for me to bite off in pieces. Since I’m writing a Bible study book, a word count isn’t always the best goal, but instead, I broke the book down into sections and decided to complete a certain number of sections. Each time I check off a small task, it’s a win.
Week 3 Plan:
For week 3, I wasn’t able to block out a strategic block earlier in the week (I’ll be doing it on Saturday). Here are my tactics for week 3:
- Record Ch 2 story
- Create freebie for ch 2
- Write 4 stories (these are the beginning of each chapter)
- Write 10 Notes sections
- Record Ch 1 story
- Pray for book 5x/week
- Review Sway portal and apply for opportunities
- weekly RW newsletter
- CS gift list post
- Weekly RW blog post
- FB live: Weird Bible Questions
I’ll check in next week to let you know how week 3 went!
