12-Week Challenge

The idea of the 12-week challenge is to acquire a habit of sitting regularly in the blue box (important to you / not urgent) and work towards your goals. This is an opportunity for you to consciously make space for your most important work. I have been doing this challenge for many years and it has been a game-changer. Over the years, many people from my workshops have tried it as well and it has resonated with a lot of them.
There is no additional time commitment that is required from you. Rather, it’s more a shift of your focus away from the day-to-day grind into achieving your actual goals.

As the name suggests, the challenge will run over 12 weeks. The idea of running over 12 weeks is based on the book by Brian P. Moran - The 12 Week Year.

The basic idea consists of three steps:

You decide on three goals that you want to focus on over these 12 weeks (e.g., a fellowship, a difficult paper, some health-related goals, etc.).
You structure your weekdays to have time in the mornings (i.e., your time when you arrive at your office) to work at these goals (ideally) every day a little bit before you even open your email, and the day-to-day firefighting starts.
You log your progress in a shared Excel sheet with other people.

I will give you feedback on your goals and support you throughout the 12 weeks.

Why should I participate?

First and foremost, it allows you to give yourself a mental space for working towards your goals (blue box) without getting them pushed back by “urgent” meetings and firefighting.

Second, working on goals over a longer period of time, you will see clear progress. Sometimes when the goals are so big, it feels like we don’t make any progress when we work on them just every once in a while.

Third, it will help you to establish a habit; actually, multiple habits. Habits to say no, because this time in the morning is reserved for the challenge! A habit of sticking to it even if it’s difficult, because you see other people in the challenge working on their goals. Finally, you will establish a habit of going back to your goals on a regular basis, which will make you see opportunities.

Fourth, the challenge will give you a daily space to work on the most exciting parts of your academic life. By participating, you are making the decision to take active control over your fate. This is the space where you not only grow, but also find fulfilment and happiness.

Power Combination of Productivity Tools

The 12-week challenge leverages your insights from the workshop and 4 productivity techniques that I mentioned. It uses your new (or renewed) understanding of your most important, but difficult goals (Eat the Frog), focuses on 3 of them (Rule of Three), breaks them down into smaller pieces and time frames (Pomodoro Technique), and uses the morning (Morning Routine) to get it before the frenzy of the academic day starts.

Here are some more details as a reminder:

Eat the frog: The challenge should enable you to work on your biggest and toughest project (i.e., your ugly frogs) over a longer period. By doing them first thing in the morning will make you win the day. More about eating the frog can be found [here].

The Rule of Three: You decide only on three goals that you want to work towards over 12 weeks. Ideally, they are connected to your long-term and visionary goals. Maybe you have already decided on some yearly goals. They would be a great starting point as well. It's not necessary to have a connected deadline or that you can finish them. It’s about putting consistent effort into your goals over a longer period of time. By looking at your 3 goals every day, you will be highly focused over the 12 weeks.

Pomodoro Technique: Since these goals are so huge, it’s best to break them down into small, manageable pieces. Since it's hard to predict how we feel over the 12 weeks (energy levels will fluctuate), the best way is to define the commitment in the form of time (instead of outputs). For example, it's much easier to achieve writing for 25 minutes every day instead of 1,000 words. Sometimes the words don’t flow. More on the Pomodoro Technique can be found [here].

Morning Routine: Even if you are not a morning person, working on your most important task before the day-to-day grind starts is crucial. This also means, you should work on your 12-week challenge goal even before you open your email. More on how to set up a morning routine can be found [here].

How should I choose my goals?

As mentioned above, the challenges allow you to work on your “ugly frogs.” Think of any goal that you always wanted to achieve, but it seems you never have time for it because your days are consumed by the meetings, emails, and a lot of firefighting. The goals don't have to be necessarily connected to a specific deadline (although they can be). They don’t even have to be finished within the 10 weeks. They can be also rather vague and you don’t know how to get there. You can use the 10-challenge for developing ideas, for brainstorming, researching ideas, etc. The idea is to make significant steps towards achieving your goals. The goals can also be very concrete with a deadline. Maybe you want to submit a fellowship proposal, write this difficult review paper, revamp the lecture, etc.

The Excel sheet asks you to break it down to an average weekly, measurable effort, e.g., number of Pomodoros, or number of pushups, etc.

Example

Here is an example from one of my previous challenges to give some feeling and reasoning behind the numbers:

Over the years, I was able to structure my day such that I have at least 1.5 hours every day in the morning to work on my most important tasks (sometimes/days I have 2 hours). This means I have potentially 3 to 4 Pomodoros available to me every day. I left 1-2 Pomodoros as a buffer to work on important daily tasks that were urgent (green box - urgent and important). This included preparing for meetings, admin-related work with a deadline, feedback to my students on papers and theses, etc.

Based on that my goals were the following:

Goal 1: To do 5 Pomodoros per week on a high-impact paper. At that time, I was working on a Science Robotics and one Nature Machine Intelligence paper. Both required a lot of work. 5 Pomodoros per week meant, on average, I should work at least 1 Pomodoro per day. If I was in the flow, i.e., the first Pomodoro went really well, I often kept on working on these articles. Note that working on the articles did not just include writing, but also meetings where we discussed the papers, finding information about the submission process, asking for feedback, making figures, etc.

Goal 2: To work 8 Pomodoros per week on proposals. This was connected to my yearly goal to submit 4 proposals. The idea was, as with the articles, to work at least 1 Pomodoro per day. However, I wanted to push myself since there was a deadline for a proposal within the challenge’s time frame. Again, work included not just the writing, but also brainstorming ideas, meetings with feedback and finances, all admin-related tasks for the submission, budget, etc.

Goal 3: 210 pushups per week. This was connected to my yearly goal to make 10,000 pushups in a year. This part of me was staying healthy and sticking around longer for my family. The 10k breakdown to around 28 per day on average. So I decided 30 * 7 days = 210 is a good weekly goal.

Other tasks you could consider:

Working on your promotion / tenure case
Running a certain amount of time or kilometres per week (on average)
Revamping/developing a lecture
Writing an introduction/lab manual for new people joining the group
Writing a book (including brainstorming ideas, writing pitches and sending them to publishers, writing, etc.)
Working on a startup idea
Any goals from your private life (doesn't have to be health-related)
Reading papers / books / or learning something new (software, skills)
Working on a code basis that will be useful

If you need some help in defining the goals, please reach out to me (helmut.hauser@bristol.ac.uk).

If you can't find three goals, that's fine. However, I recommend that you have at least 2 to learn to switch between objectives. Also, consider that you will very likely not work on every goal every day. Over the 12 weeks, there will be ebbs and flows (e.g., because there is a deadline connected - green box). Below are some additional tips.

Some additional tips

Goals of the challenge can be quite personal. If you don’t want to share your goals, you can simply write Goal 1 into your Excel sheet.
Adapt the challenge to your needs. We all have wildly different workloads. Consider your weekly schedule. Which days of the week have a morning (1-2 hours) that is under your control? For me, it works best when I work on my challenge every working day (Monday to Friday). However, you might have to teach or attend meetings that you can't move. Work around them.
However, try to make as much space for you as possible in the morning. While this might not be possible for every day (maybe you have to teach or there are meetings you don’t control), some things are under your control. For example, you can move meetings with students, your group, or office hours to later in the day.
If bigger chunks of time work better (e.g., 2-hour blocks), base your weekly numbers on them. For some people, the 25 minutes are too interruptive.
Consider also what is coming up in the next 12 weeks. How does your teaching load look? Is there marking coming up? Any other deadlines? Holidays? There might be a week when you are at a conference. Calculate that into your weekly average.
If, after one or two weeks, you see your numbers are too low or too high. You can adapt. The idea is to find goals that stretch you without breaking you. I will send out a reminder email to have a second look at your weekly averages.
Don't worry about losing a streak. The idea is to be consistent over a longer period of time.
Health-related goals might not be a good fit in the morning. You can do them whenever it works best for you.
If you have any questions or doubts during the 12 weeks, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me (helmut.hauser@bristol.ac.uk).
My plan is to scale up these challenges, and any feedback would be appreciated.

How to participate

If you want to participate, drop me a short email (helmut.hauser@bristol.ac.uk) or use the button below. I will put you on the list and send you a link to a shared Excel sheet, where you can add your goals and during the challenge log your progress and see also the others’ progress.