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The 12-Week Year on the Price Writers Podcast Episode 42
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We’re kicking off 2026 by rethinking how we set and achieve goals.
In this episode of the Price Writers Podcast, Jeremy and Catrin explore The 12 Week Year by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington, and why shorter, more focused planning cycles can be far more effective than traditional annual goals.
They discuss how compressing goal setting into 12-week periods creates urgency, clarity, and momentum, particularly in pricing teams where annual targets often arrive late and priorities shift throughout the year. Drawing on real-world experience, they explore execution versus outcome metrics, the role of review periods, and how focusing on the actions you control can lead to better results over time.
This is a thoughtful and realistic look at goal setting for pricing professionals who want progress without unnecessary pressure.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Price Writer Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
If you haven't. there
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Price Writer Podcast with Katrin Townsend and me, Jeremy Keating.
Goal Setting for 2026: The 12-Week Year
00:00:12
Speaker
Join us as we explore and discuss the world of insurance-related books, offering our insight and our recommendations.
00:00:19
Speaker
We're kicking off 2026 by looking at goal setting, and while there are lots of books on this topic, we'll be sharing our thoughts on the 12-week year by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington.
00:00:32
Speaker
We'll start by telling you about the book and later we will share just how we're applying these tips to our work and our non-work goals. So Katrin, a 12 week year. ah i don't think they've quite got the calendar right there.
00:00:45
Speaker
Can you explain? The idea behind the 12 week year is that instead of doing all of your goal setting annually, and then only reviewing your goals at the end of the year.
00:00:57
Speaker
So goal setting and goal review is both annual. The idea is that you compress that into 12 weeks. So it doesn't necessarily mean that your goals are the same as they would be if you had a 12-month year to do them in.
00:01:12
Speaker
But it does mean that you take that one 12-week period as a whole unit.
Benefits of 12-Week Goals
00:01:18
Speaker
So it's not just a quarter of a year. You're still going to do all of the end of year things that you would normally do. So review your performance, give yourself a deadline.
00:01:28
Speaker
But also there's this idea of like... a blank slate that we have on a calendar year. No one ever says in January, well, I desperately need to catch up on last year's goal. We kind of have this temporal break yeah that happens on January the 1st and suddenly last year's goals don't matter. We have a fresh start. We can do what we want this year. So that's another aspect of the 12 week year. You don't dwell on stuff. You just keep moving forward.
00:01:57
Speaker
So I think this really works. I know it doesn't match exactly, but I think this works is a lot better because i find a year is way too long to stay focused.
00:02:08
Speaker
And that's if you can set a goal that keeps you motivated all year. i mean, so often I found that I've set a goal and by the end of the year, I'm not doing it because it no longer applies anymore for whatever reason.
00:02:22
Speaker
Or maybe i set a goal and then halfway through the year, i kind of realized that it's a bit too easy and I've basically already hit it or I'm almost there. Planning for an entire year is quite tricky because there's so much uncertainty.
00:02:39
Speaker
But planning for 12 weeks is really manageable. It also means that when you're behind in a year, it doesn't feel like a big deal. If you're behind on your New Year's resolution and it's March, you think, well, it's fine. It's no big deal. I've got nine months to make it up.
00:02:55
Speaker
But when you're behind and it's August, you're suddenly thinking, I'm so behind. i can never make up eight months. It's
Challenges and Solutions in Goal Setting
00:03:05
Speaker
insurmountable. I'm just not going to bother.
00:03:07
Speaker
And I think what's nice about the 12-week year is that you've always got a bit of time pressure. You can get back on track, but also you've got this fresh start coming quite soon as well.
00:03:19
Speaker
So I think it works quite well on that. I don't know if you've worked like this, Jeremy, but how much of your work you either get done in January with that fresh burst of energy or in November, December, when you're suddenly frantically trying to get everything done?
00:03:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's not a way that I work myself, but it definitely is something I'm aware of. And certainly in work back when I did work as a head of pricing, I can remember times where I'm going to sound really cynical now, but say, hypothetically, there was an initiative that claims were going to save 10% because of their new system.
00:03:57
Speaker
And you get sort of September and it's like, oh, that's not worked out or sales are going to get 10% more revenue again, hypothetically, because of their new system. And you also get to the end of Q3 and it's like, oh, that's not hit target.
00:04:13
Speaker
Could pricing possibly generate several million pounds between now and the end of the year, please? And you're like, yeah, course we can, but we're going have to to put the prices up. And people are like, oh, well yeah, OK, we need to hit target.
00:04:26
Speaker
Which is funny because probably six months earlier when you suggested putting the prices up, everyone went, oh no, can't possibly do it. So yeah I'm going to sound really cynical, but actually I do think that annual mentality can actually prevent people from high achieving.
00:04:39
Speaker
And I definitely agree with you. I think there is a habit to front load the work in January and November really because people often say well no one does anything in December anyway so you've got basically a whole section of that 12 month plan that no one's going to do anything and also August is often a write-off too so we've got a good chunk of that 12 year plan that we know already before we even set the plan that we're not going to do anything with And then April, September aren't good if you've got people who are doing actuarial exams because they're busy with that. Obviously December is your like deployment blackout period, so definitely can't get anything deployed then.
00:05:17
Speaker
yeah Working annually ends up having a lot of time when you're just stuck, you've got this like calendar paralysis. But as well, you miss out on that January, New Year burst of enthusiasm. And I think ah a lot of people, probably a lot of nerdy people who we might work with, have that same feeling in September. You've got that like back to school, fresh start, you've got new shoes, new stationery, and it all you have a fresh burst of enthusiasm to get stuff done.
00:05:42
Speaker
And this 12 week year system is really taking those two bursts of energy and just interspersing them with an extra two. So you get four bursts of new start energy, four lots of deadlines. So nothing ever really feels like a dead period.
00:06:01
Speaker
Hmm. And I think the other reason is that it might work for pricing teams is because, again, maybe a bit cynically, but for a lot of pricing teams, they might not get their annual goals until March.
00:06:13
Speaker
By the time that trickles down through HR and maybe your chief pricing officer has to have their goal signed off on the system and then then the next level down, next level down. So your actual pricing team might not know their whole annual targets until March.
00:06:30
Speaker
Which makes them think, well, what should they be doing between January March? So I think what works really well about the 12-week year is that, firstly, you can utilize that time. You can still set your own little 12-week goal before the company official targets come in.
00:06:48
Speaker
But also it means that you don't feel like you're already behind. I always used to hate that feeling when someone would give me a target in March and it assumed that I'd already done loads of stuff that i didn't even know was supposed to do. And then I felt behind and it just stressed me out. I hate being behind in my goals. so So what I like about this is that wherever you are, you can start it.
00:07:06
Speaker
Yeah, i I really like that. And actually following on from that, I think I can remember having done annual appraisals in November because people didn't want to do them in December. And then if they get left to January, it feels like it's, you know, the year's already finished. So can we do them in November, please?
00:07:21
Speaker
And having just that same situation where the actual objectives for next year weren't signed off until March time as well. So there is that sort of grey zone in which people are just getting on with their work. And actually, we don't really know what the targets are going to be for the year.
00:07:36
Speaker
I also think that setting them in stone for the coming 12 months has a habit of people focusing very deeply on achieving just that, if that makes sense. But in reality, stuff comes up during the year.
00:07:48
Speaker
And I can think of times that have been slightly frustrating because you've had things that needed doing. And there might be a sense among people that it's not part of their annual objectives. So they don't want to be the person that says, oh, yeah, you can take on that work.
00:08:04
Speaker
So you get this quite extreme
Managing Burnout and Execution Tracking
00:08:06
Speaker
pushback to focus on things that you set six months ago that might not actually be the best thing for the team now. And goodness me, the idea of re-changing annual goals in a big company partway through the year would be horrendous as well.
00:08:19
Speaker
So actually, I think there's so much to be gained by this more 12-week mentality about what you're doing. And I don't think it means you lose sight of the longer-term picture, if anything. I think you're actually are breaking the longer-term picture up into manageable units to achieve.
00:08:34
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely feel like this method forces you to break it into baby steps. So whatever your big goal is. And in the book, they use a lot of non-work tasks. Yeah, they use sales as an example, but they also use things like losing weight or improving your relationships as well. But if you break it into baby steps and you're...
00:08:56
Speaker
12-week goals don't all have to be the same throughout your annual year because they each are treated as a year in themselves. So I think what's great about it is that it gives you so much flexibility. It gives you more focus, but also it makes it seem a lot more manageable.
00:09:13
Speaker
And my biggest concern when I started reading this book was that I thought that the annual goal would be the same as the 12-week goal. goal and i was been like whoa so you're doing four times as much that's not quite what they mean they are suggesting that you would break it up into something a bit smaller but following on from that is having been in teams where october november are the months that everything gets done like you say december goes to a blackout period january no one knows what the roadmap is and then all the work is front loaded february march april four for example
00:09:45
Speaker
I know that doing periods of that is really intense. And my one concern was about burnout. How do you think they really answer that in the book? Yeah, I was quite concerned about burnout as well, actually, because i i do wonder with setting 12-week goals if you can actually end up trying to push yourself much too hard.
00:10:04
Speaker
But I think you end up naturally at the end of those 12 weeks with a review period in which you can say to yourself, oh, goodness me, actually, i set too hard a goal, Beth. I'm going to have to rethink that for the coming 12 months and actually adjust down or indeed up if you found it was too easy, but you can it adjust up and down almost whilst you're in flight in a lot of ways by doing it this way.
00:10:28
Speaker
You effectively have this 13th week as well during which you review, which is kind of similar to the period we tend to get at the end and the start of annual planning cycles, except it's not a dead zone of sort three months.
00:10:41
Speaker
where people aren't really sure what their objectives are. It's just a set week period for actually doing reviews and you do get a bit of calm time during that as well. there was an early chapter about dropping low priority work.
00:10:55
Speaker
And the idea was that if you drop your low priority or work, then you actually can pick up some more high priority work and high priority work is defined as the things that help you meet your 12 week goals. So I really liked that. He gives a few suggestions for that. He also gives really good suggestions about time blocking, which I personally found really helpful.
00:11:15
Speaker
I've tried time blocking in the past and it hasn't always worked for me. And I was a bit like, oh, it's just because too busy or got too many meetings, whatever it is. But i actually tried some of his tips. i thought they were really good. And I think the other thing he was very clear about is the benefit of having rest weeks.
00:11:31
Speaker
So like you said, that 13th week. And you can also rest during the 12 weeks as well. One thing that I was surprised to hear him say is that you only actually need to achieve about 85% execution.
00:11:46
Speaker
You don't actually need to hit your goal. You just need to get 85% of the way there. So if your goal is to hit a certain calorie limit or to do a certain number of sales calls or something every single day, as long as you hit that, like 85% of the days, you're still going to be on target, which automatically builds in a week or two of...
00:12:11
Speaker
grace even within those 12 weeks which I find really encouraging but I think as well because like say the goal is not a huge ginormous annual goal you can never get too far behind it's always still manageable for you I particularly like that, actually. And it does make me think about projects I've been on where we have broken the work up into chunks.
00:12:33
Speaker
And actually, that would probably fit better because you're there with your big annual objectives that cover the whole year. But your actual work tends to come in more discrete packages than that. What will you take from this book and perhaps implement immediately, Catra?
00:12:48
Speaker
I've already started using this system. So I'm actually cheated a little bit because I was working between Christmas and New Year's. I actually started last week. um Sorry, that i know that I know that seems crazy but to start a New Year's resolution one week ahead, but is' something i I've always really enjoyed doing because then it feels like even by mid-January, feel like you're ahead.
00:13:11
Speaker
So that's always a little tip if you like to feel like you're winning even against yourself. That is so you. Thank you. But yeah, I've set up a little tracker.
00:13:23
Speaker
I've given myself four goals this 12-week period. I've got my main one, which is all about creating great PrizeWriter Pro content. So the main thing I need to do for that every single day is I need to do some script writing, which makes a lot of sense.
00:13:38
Speaker
And previously, obviously that would be important for me to do, but I wouldn't do it every day. I would tend to have a writing day and a recording day and an editing day.
00:13:49
Speaker
So I'm hoping by doing it every day, I just get into that headspace of being creative daily. one of the things I really like about this is I'm not just tracking my final output, but my execution.
00:14:00
Speaker
So in the book, they're really clear about that you should always track your execution and not the final outcome because you don't always necessarily control the final outcome. And this kind of taps into what Christine Hoffbeck said in her book, Winning Conditions, which is that...
00:14:15
Speaker
It's kind of probabilistic. You can do the right things and sometimes they work out and sometimes they don't. And you don't really get to control that final outcome. All you can do is make it more likely that it will work by doing that action more frequently.
00:14:29
Speaker
And that's the same approach they use here. It's not just have you made those sales or have you lost that weight? But it's more, were you doing the right things? Because if you're doing the right things consistently, then that end goal will come.
00:14:43
Speaker
And if it's not, then maybe you're not doing the right things. But also because these things work on a lag. And I think everyone who works in pricing knows this, right? You put a price change in. but the actual result doesn't really hit the book for a few months.
00:14:56
Speaker
You don't really see that change immediately. And that can sometimes feel disheartening. i think it's totally valid to measure things in that way. It reminds me of a book called The Score Takes Care of Itself, which is about an American football coach.
00:15:10
Speaker
And he is a effectively saying that there's all these things that he does control, that the thing he does not control is the score in the game. That's the main thing he has to achieve.
00:15:23
Speaker
So he has to focus on all these other things so that the score will take care of itself. It reminds me being very similar to that. So tracking the things you're doing to achieve the goal, and then the goal will take care of it itself.
00:15:36
Speaker
So how has this changed how you've created your goals for the coming year? Normally I would set a goal that's really outcome focused. So in the past I've created reading goal plans. In fact, for the past five years I've had a reading goal, which is to read 52 books a year.
00:15:53
Speaker
And I always hit that. But I think the problem that this book has shown me with that goal is that that's not really the goal that I'm interested in. Mm-hmm.
00:16:05
Speaker
I want to read a lot, but I also want to read really widely. So, and this actually happened the first year I used this goal. I ended up reading 13 books in a series.
00:16:16
Speaker
And it was the Plantagenet series by Jean Plady. And it was fantastic. If you love historical fiction and medieval warfare, then this is probably your jam.
00:16:27
Speaker
But I read 13 books in this Plantagenet series. And by the end of the year, I felt like I'd not read very much. And it was because I basically just read one long point of view.
00:16:39
Speaker
And so after that, i'm I've always tried to read a bit more widely, but the metric's not great because even if I wanted to read all those books in 12 weeks, that isn't what I'd want to do because I want to make reading an ongoing habit. Mm-hmm. The other problem I have with output metrics is that I want to race to get to the end, even if that means I enjoy the process a bit less, which is so silly, honestly.
00:17:04
Speaker
But if my goal is to read 52 books, then there'll be some books, particularly fiction, I'll just be racing through. and not taking the time to really save at the prose because I'm like, I can finish this super quickly.
00:17:15
Speaker
But that's obviously not the point. And yeah, so I hit my goal, but I totally missed the point.
Long-term vs Short-term Goals
00:17:21
Speaker
I think that this book has really helped me redefine what my goals are and help me look at the difference between execution metrics and outcome metrics and I think using them slightly differently is going to make my goals a bit more how I want them to be this year what about you how has this changed your goal setting this year
00:17:47
Speaker
It's really made me think about my own goals. I would say they form into kind of two sets. So there's quite long term ones that i am working towards. Everything I do kind of works towards them. It's building PriceWriter.
00:17:59
Speaker
And there are the headline things like stay fit and healthy that I do, but i don't really have any detail that goes underneath that.
00:18:11
Speaker
So I was thinking I need to build in more short-term steps that lead to the big goals and more kind of corporeal steps that lead to the overarching ones and things I can actually then say I have done that.
00:18:25
Speaker
Because I do stay fit and healthy. So I do achieve that goal, but it's kind of a rolling thing. It's not like a new thing to achieve. It's just maintaining the thing I'm doing anyway.
00:18:36
Speaker
But actually could give those some underlying goals to make sure I achieve that. Do you that probably leads to more variety in what I do as well, which a sort of good upside to this system.
00:18:47
Speaker
That reminds me of something that happened to at university. When I was in my final the year, I was really enjoying running and I decided to that I'd run a half marathon and created a 10 week plan or something.
00:18:59
Speaker
The race day came and I felt ready and prepared and I ran my half marathon and I was feeling kind of relatively pleased with how I did. and then I never ran again for the next six months.
00:19:12
Speaker
Honestly, I never ran again. I just, I was like, that was my goal. i did the goal. now what and it's not really it's not really like silly to be like my goal is to maintain half marathon speed fitness yeah yeah but I also didn't want to keep signing up half marathons because they get kind of expensive and bulldoze is your weekend or whatever so I then had this dilemma how do I keep interested interested in it Having achieved a big goal, I think a lot of people feel this actually once they have achieved a big goal, no matter what it is, whether it's a financial or weight loss goal or anything like that. It's the how do i
00:19:56
Speaker
keep momentum while maintaining? How do I keep interested in this when, as this becomes not just a new thing I'm doing, a new year's resolution, but as this becomes a lifestyle for me.
00:20:07
Speaker
And ah university, I totally got that wrong. i I just literally stopped running. And then few months later, I was like, oh, I kind of miss it I'll pick up again. shit This year, I have a running goal.
00:20:20
Speaker
And I've decided that I want to run 100 in the 12 weeks.
00:20:25
Speaker
So some of you might not be thinking that's very far, but it feels pretty far for me. It's a little bit of a push, but not by loads, hopefully. So I'm going to try and run three times a week and do that. So I've got an execution metric, which is I want to run three times a week.
00:20:41
Speaker
When I do run, I tend to do about five k maybe a bit more. And so I'm hoping that as long as I run three times a week, I'm going to get to that 100 miles. So that's how I've used it in something like maintain running. Because realistically, I don't have time to run more. I don't have time to run more distance and I don't really have the ability to run faster. Yeah, i just want to maintain it and that's how I've used mine this year.
Seasonal Adaptability of Goals
00:21:06
Speaker
And that's definitely a reasonable running goal that maybe you'll step up the next quarter.
00:21:12
Speaker
Maybe, but it'll be spring then. Well, I guess that's the other benefit, right? Is that if you've got a weight loss goal or a fitness goal or even a more salad goal or whatever it is, it's really hard to start that in January because it's like, it's not really the right weather for this at all, is it? That's true, Swann. Unless you're one of our Australian listeners. date It's not a great time to necessarily want to be spending a lot of time outside if you haven't previously.
00:21:39
Speaker
So we're just having a 12 week goal. You can be like, well, it's still winter. It's still icy. It's still slippy outside. I'm going to have an indoor goal for the next 12 weeks. And then after that, when the weather is hopefully starting to improve, you can do something else. Like said, it gives you that flexibility that you can match your goal to the season.
00:21:57
Speaker
Because in the past, honestly, I would have been like, okay, my overall goal is to do fitness or eat salad or whatever. I'll start it in the summer. And then by the time summer's coming, I've forgotten I even made the goal.
00:22:10
Speaker
yeah Yeah, that is a problem actually. I do think just with 12 weeks, people are much more likely to stick with something as well. It doesn't feel like weirdly open-ended. and You've clearly got something you're aiming towards in 12 weeks. I think that's easier to stick with.
Book Recommendation and Practical Insights
00:22:25
Speaker
I actually like this book so much that I, e having listened to it on Audible, I bought a paper copy of it. So there it is. Because I want to work through it properly during the coming 12 weeks and indeed the coming year and onward into the future.
00:22:40
Speaker
Catherine, is this one that you would recommend? I think I would recommend it, actually. oh Well, I'll tell you what. I'll tell you how I go over the next 12 weeks. And we'll see if I recommend it.
00:22:52
Speaker
ah See if you stick with it and do it for another 12 weeks. I would definitely recommend it. But like you, I need to actually work through it and give it a try properly. But I definitely think it's a good
Reading Goals and Podcast Bingo
00:23:03
Speaker
book. Even just the fact that it's made me think about how I could make my goals better and how it is actually better to focus on achieving things in discrete chunks as well.
00:23:15
Speaker
All right. And last question, because this is a reading book reviewing podcast after all. What are your reading goals for 2026, Jeremy? Well, i I have that I'm going to read a number of books, actually. so it's it's my usual 60 books during the year. And beyond that, I haven't really thought about it. I do have a very long list ah of books that are on my to read list.
00:23:40
Speaker
But I think I do the typical thing people do, which are I made a long to read list and then I keep picking something else that's not from that list to actually read. So I think possibly I need to focus a bit more on getting through the list because I obviously wanted to read them when I chose that as being list.
00:23:56
Speaker
What's yours, Katrin? I think mine is going to be the Read 52 books this year again, but inspired by this almost executionable idea, ah want to try and make sure that I'm reading a little tiny bit every day, which isn't something I've done in the past, but I want to make sure that keep that streak up.
00:24:13
Speaker
And then my other thing is similar to you. I want to clear down some of my to be read list. Sometimes I find that really hard to motivate myself to do. so I am going to use the PriceWriters podcast bingo. Ooh, this is our podcast bingo.
00:24:33
Speaker
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to try and find each of these books or something like that on my to be read list. So it's got all kinds of things on there. It's got a book that came out this year, books with different colors, books that start with different words, books that were written between different time periods.
00:24:51
Speaker
and I'm going to try and use that clear my list a little bit more like you. Again, just to get those diverse perspectives. And of course, obviously read books that we can talk about on the podcast.
00:25:03
Speaker
I will definitely do
Conclusion and Preview of Next Episode
00:25:04
Speaker
the same, actually. So I will work through my podcast bingo as well, and then we can see who the winner is in a few months' time. If you haven't got a copy of the Pricewriters podcast bingo, comment below don't know, how else you comment on a podcast? I don't know, actually.
00:25:23
Speaker
Comment below and think Who else would they I don't know. Send us a post us a letter.
00:25:34
Speaker
That would be, that'd be so retro. would honestly do that. Send us self-addressed emblo and we'll post one back to you. Yeah, back in the day. Just comment below and we will send you a copy.
00:25:48
Speaker
Or if you're a pro member, then there's also a free printable on pro. Next time, we'll be reviewing a book by one of our favourite Australian friends, Julia Lessing.
00:25:58
Speaker
She's brought out her second book. You might remember that we reviewed her first book last summer. And now she's brought out a sequel, which is called Senior Leadership, An Essential Guide for Actories.
00:26:10
Speaker
This is a book not to be missed. We're really excited to be talking about it. That podcast will come out the same week as Australia Day. I can't wait for this, actually. I was honoured to have a pre-release copy of this so I could do a review for Julia. And it was excellent. A really, really enjoyable book. This one really prepares for a step up to the next level as well.
00:26:32
Speaker
Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next time.
00:26:44
Speaker
PriceWriters transforms pricing professionals into the most respected leaders in insurance. Find out more about our PriceWriters Pro platform by visiting pricewriters.com.