(Re)designing My Life at 38 | My 12 Week Year Plan (Pt. 1)

I have given myself 365 days to redesign my life at 38. And normally what I would do is to list all the things that I want to accomplish and then keep track of my progress throughout the year. However, based on my track records with New Year's resolution, I know how this is going to go. What I will do is to get super excited, over plan it, and then lose my motivation halfway through. I knew that I needed more than just another vision board. I needed a system that works. That's when I stumbled across the book called 12-Week Year by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington, which promises to have a method that can actually help you achieve your goals. This book has been reviewed by virtually every single productivity YouTuber out there. But I thought to myself, I wonder if this actually works. So I decided to put the book into test, using my life as the experiment and the book as a blueprint for designing my dream life. So in this video, I'm going to walk you through the key concepts of the 12-Week Year book and how I'm using them to change my life on the next 12 weeks and ultimately in the next year. The 12-Week Year book is based on a simple but powerful idea that in business, most goals are achieved in the last quarter of the year. And this is because as the deadline closes, people feel the need to stop procrastinating and actually start achieving their goals. So instead of setting goals for 12 months, this method breaks down the year into 4 90-day sprints. Ultimately, the goal is to trick your brain into caring and doing stuff now rather than later. This approach aims to address some key struggles that people face when trying to achieve their goals. Number one is the execution gap. According to the book, what differentiates high achievers with lower achievers or people who are successful in achieving their goals versus people who are not, is not the lack of knowledge, but the lack of execution. The book calls this the execution gap, which is the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. For example, I know what I need to do in order to lose weight. I know that I need to exercise more, eat healthy, be on a calorie deficit, and I should probably not be finishing a pack of peanut M&Ms every single night before bed. The problem is not that I don't know what to do. The problem is that I am not consistent enough with the steps that I need to take in order to get there. Lately, I've been struggling a lot with maintaining consistency to achieve my goals, and there are factors that are beyond just my willpower and the lack of proper planning, which I will get into in a moment, but I have definitely been a victim of the execution gap due to my overplanning and underdoing. This system promises to close down this gap by shrinking the timeline and making your immediate future more visual to you and making procrastination harder to justify. Number two is annualized thinking or the I-have-time illusion. When we set goals for the year, the timeline is so far away that it becomes easy to be relaxed about the things that you need to do. So the book is about shifting your thinking from an annual goal setting into a quarterly goal setting, which honestly I feel most of us rarely do in our personal lives. And as I said, by having this closer deadline, you feel more the sense of urgency and more motivated to get moving, or at least I'm hoping so. Number three is the discomfort of change. When we set goals for ourselves, it usually involves changing something, and these things feel uncomfortable because change is uncomfortable. For example, for me to read more, I need to sacrifice sitting in front of the TV and watching Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, which I am obsessed by the way. Whatever it is that you want to start doing in your life, you are going to feel a level of discomfort when you start. That is inevitable. The good news is that after some time, this discomfort will pass and what was uncomfortable to you once will eventually become second nature. But how do we make sure that this initial discomfort will not hold you back from achieving your goals? The key is to create a compelling vision for your future, something that helps you move towards what is your ideal life. There is one quote from the book that I really like, which says, if you want to know what your future holds for you, look at your actions because they predict it. However you're acting now is going to tell you what you can expect from your future. And if you have a vision for yourself of what you want your life to look like, then use that as your anchor for what actions you want to take today for that vision to become true. The 12-week method aims to address these three struggles that we all face when we try to change something in our lives. But what is the method itself? According to the book, in order for you to achieve your goals, you need to have an execution system that works. And a successful execution system must have these five elements, a vision, a 12-week plan, clear tactics, process control, and measurement. This is how I'm going to apply each of these elements into my life right now. Okay, so we start with a compelling vision. What are the things that you want in the long term? How do you want your life to look like three, five years from now? Be as specific as you can. Where do you want to live? Do you want to move countries? Do you want to change career? Do you want to have children, to get married, to lose weight, to gain muscles? What is it that you are envisioning for your future that you really want to achieve? Cast a vision for yourself and for your life. The vision that you set for your life, whatever that is, first needs to become clear in your mind so it can become real in the real life. My long-term vision for my life involves having a house with a garden where I can host events and receive all of my friends and have lots of pets and build a business that allows me to be creative and allows me to live in two different countries because as an expat, I want to spend the most time as possible with my family, but I have built a home in a foreign country, so I do want to have this flexibility for my life. Before I can build my dream life, I need to work on something deeper. In the past few months, I have been dealing with symptoms of depression, fatigue, lack of motivation, and other symptoms that are related to hormonal imbalance. I will talk about this in a separate video where I go more in-depth on my symptoms as well as the treatment that I'm going to go through, but for now, it suffices to say that I have been not feeling like myself. It is really difficult for me to think about building a dream life when my body and my mind are not really responding to my commands. So for the next 12 weeks, my plan is to feel good again. This phase is what I'm calling Operation Feel Good. From June to August of 2025, my goal is to get my energy, my confidence, and my health back. How does that look like in practice? That's how we enter step three, the tactics. I separated this in three categories, health, beauty and style, and mindset. The number one under health is kicking off my treatment for hormonal imbalance. I think this will really make a huge difference in how I feel in the upcoming months, so this is the top priority for me right now. Second, be back in shape. And for that, there are two main things that I need to do. One will be to cut sugar for the next 12 weeks, and I am saying this while I am not on my PMS. PMS Dani is not going to be happy about this one, but I am putting this here so I can hold myself accountable. Second, I'm going to join the 75 Heart Challenge. If you haven't heard about the 75 Heart Challenge, it is a physical and mental challenge in which you have to do five things. Number one, drink a gallon of water every day. Number two, you have to exercise twice a day for 45 minutes, with one of the exercises being outdoors. Number three, you have to read 10 pages every day. Number four, you need to follow a diet of your choice. And number five, you need to take progress pictures every day. And since I have a wedding in July that I want to look good for, the 75 Heart Challenge is perfect for me right now. Under the beauty and style category, I want to one, find a skincare routine that I can stay consistent with, and two, find a makeup routine that I can do every day. I don't use makeup. I don't know how to put on makeup. I never learned how to use an eyeshadow. I did my best today to make this work for the camera, but I don't usually wear makeup. And I think that I just need to find some simple things that I can do every day to help me feel good about myself when I look in the mirror, and that will make a huge difference. And under mindset, I have three items. One, journaling daily, doing the three morning pages, which is a concept that came from Julia Cameron in the book, The Artist's Way, in which you have to write anything that comes to mind and fill three pages every single day. And I think this is a great method. I've been using this method for some months now, and it has worked for me a lot. Number two is to meditate daily. I have meditated for 10 years and completely dropped it in the past six months. So it is definitely something that I need to go back to. And finally, I want to practice a hobby three times a week. I love to do things with my hands. I love to paint. I love to sculpt. I love to play the ukulele. I love to learn how to play new instruments. But I haven't been doing any of this, I think, for the past year or so. I do feel that it helps me a lot with mental clarity, helps me focus. I do want to go back to it, and that's why I'm putting it here for my 12-week plan. Okay, so now we have a vision, we have a goal, and we have my tactics for the next 12 weeks. Now we need to go to step four, which is process control. And this is about the tools and techniques that you're going to use in order to stick to your plans. There's no one-size-fits-all. What you're going to use doesn't really matter. What matters is that they are helpful to you. There are three things that usually work for me. Number one, reminders on my phone. Second is habit stacking, which is stacking a new habit that you want to incorporate into your life with something that you already do. For example, I meditate before I brush my teeth. And for me, this technique is really, really good when I want to make a new habit stick. And the third thing that usually works for me is morning task batching. And this is about trying to get most of the things done in the morning so you have the rest of your day free to work on something else. This has always worked for me, and I'm going to continue to do that. And finally, step five, your scorecard. The scorecard is going to tell me how well I'm doing in my 12-week plan. This is about reflecting back on your week. So you can reflect on the things that you are doing well, on the things that need adjustment, so you can keep yourself accountable and keep yourself on track. To quote from the book, results are simply a confirmation of greatness. The greatness happens when you make the choice to do what it takes to become great. I know that my dream life won't happen overnight, but it can happen if I give myself the time, the patience, and the space that I need to change. I hope that these videos and this experiment that I am conducting with my own life inspires you to try something new. And not just to get more productive or to earn more or to change your career, but really for you to take care of yourself, to take care of your health, to take care of your mental health, so you can feel strong and feel confident and finally take the steps that you need to change your life for the best. If you enjoyed this video, please make sure to like and subscribe. And I hope to see you again as I go through my journey of redesigning my life at 38. See you next time!