China 
It can often be easy to look at athletes and think they were born with the physical ability to win. In actuality, athletes have to work and train day in and out for their success. Their success came from having a dream, planning and acting on it with every fiber of their being. Like Bill Shoemaker, who was so small at birth that he was not expected to survive the first night, and then went on to become a giant icon in horse racing.
In the book The 12 Week Year, this concept proves to be pivotal. The authors call it performing in the moment, and it forces you to think about your hourly, daily and weekly accomplishments as a series of small important goals.
Here are five ideas from The 12 Week Year that you can use to accelerate success in your personal and professional life:
1. Set Shorter Goals
Instead of falling into a trap of setting long timelines to reach goals, shorten the timeline. The timeline should be short enough where you have to push yourself in order to complete your goal. Pushing yourself will force you to stay focused and it keeps your eye on the prize. According to the authors, try chunking a one-year timeline into 12-week increments with several finish lines throughout your 365 day span.
2. Take Control Of Your Day
It’s not always the lack of time that keeps us from getting things done. It is often the lack of commitment towards a goal, or even worse, lack of planning. Be aware of how you spend your time. If you notice you waste more time than being productive, adjust and fix it. Plan everything, from small tasks like day-to-day events to 12 week long goals and commit.
3. Learn From Your Failures
Don’t blame your failures on outside influences, take ownership and embrace your failures. By owning up to your failures you will learn more from them rather than blaming them on outside factors. You will learn what you did wrong and make adjustments rather than just ‘pointing fingers’. Ownership entails introspection.
4. Balance Your Time
If you are working on multiple goals, then you have to balance your time in order to achieve them. Plan out your time with the goals in mind and make sure you dedicate your time wisely in order reach multiple goals.
5. Change How You Measure End Results
People usually think in black and white, as if they achieved the goal or not. Instead, focus on the steps you took and the smaller things you achieve along the way. The authors of The 12 Week Year suggest working toward a weekly scorecard that measures whether or not you accomplished specific, critical activities—rather than outcomes. The results and end goal are achieved later!
