Hey Reader,
I didn’t start out with a neat productivity system.
I started stuck.
I had a million ideas.
Good ones, I think.
But my world was just… bumping along.
I’d make plans.
I’d start things.
I’d feel busy most weeks.
And yet, very little ever felt finished.
Everything lived in my head or on a long list.
Nothing felt solid.
Nothing felt like progress you could point at.
Then I read a book called The 12 Week Year.
The idea was simple, almost annoyingly so.
Stop treating the year as one long stretch.
Break it into quarters.
Then treat each week inside that quarter as its own mini mission.
Not “work hard this week”.
But:
What must be done by the end of this week for the quarter to move forward?
That shift changed everything for me.
Suddenly, my ideas weren’t floating around anymore.
They became rocks.
Things you could hold.
Things you could move.
A week wasn’t just time passing.
It was a container.
You picked a few tactics.
You focused.
You finished.
Then you moved on.
For the first time, momentum felt real.
And then it got better.
When I moved into the software world, people started talking about Agile.
About sprints.
Different language.
Same idea.
Two-week windows.
Clear outcomes.
Everyone pointing in the same direction.
Focus hard for a short period.
Stop.
Check where you are.
Adjust.
Go again.
What struck me wasn’t the process.
It was the alignment.
Finance knew what mattered.
Marketing knew what mattered.
Implementation. Customer service. Ops.
All pulling towards the same question:
What do we need in the next two weeks to make the business better?
Not theoretically better.
Actually better.
That’s where this whole approach comes from.
It’s not theory.
It’s not a framework I picked because it sounds good.
I’ve built it inside teams.
I’ve watched it reduce noise.
I’ve seen it turn scattered effort into progress you can feel.
The big picture matters because without it, work becomes reactive.
You chase the next thing.
You respond well.
But you don’t move forward on purpose.
Short sprints change that.
They force decisions.
They expose trade-offs.
They make priorities visible.
And most importantly, they make progress tangible.
That’s what this email sequence is about.
Not doing more.
Not cramming your diary.
But choosing a direction, focusing for a short window, and finishing things that matter.
In the next emails, I’ll break down the thinking behind this approach.
How to decide what matters.
How to keep momentum.
How to stop drifting back into old habits.
But it all starts here.
With the decision to stop letting time just pass.
And instead, use it.
If this sounds familiar, reply and tell me where you feel stuck right now.
One line is enough.
Catch you soon,
