Today is the 1st October 2025, or to put it another way Happy New Year. Before you think I have gone bonkers let’s discuss the effectiveness of four years a year.
The great thing about New Year is that people look on it as a fresh start, time to make plans and look forward to change. The problem is that using a traditional calendar there is only on New Years Day a year. If you divide the year into four and treat each quarter as a new year then so many things can be dealt with more effectively. There is the famous book “The 12 Week Year” by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington and jolly fine it is too. My problem with having a 12 week year is that everything gets out of sync. If you use a thirteen week year or four three month periods then you are still in step with the rest of the world. Year 1 begins on 1st January and Year 4 ends on 31st December. You don’t have to begin your “year” at the start of the calendar year and so, today is a good day to start.
The reasons four year a year are more effective than one are as follows:
- A twelve month year leads you into a false sense of security. On 1st January the 31st December seems a long way away. Plenty of time to catch up if things get behind. In reality you rarely catch up.
- Because a twelve month year has lots of time there is a temptation to have too many targets and goals. It seems that plans expand to fit the time theoretically available. Having a year that is thirteen weeks rather than twelve months restricts what you can do but hones the mind to prioritise and to be more reasonable about what is achievable.
- Nearly all businesses and many individuals get a disproportion amount done close to the target date. In reality this means that many businesses have good sales and cash flow toward the year end because a sense of urgency kicks in. More gets done in the last two months of the year than in the previous ten. Only having thirteen weeks to play with maintains an almost constant incentive to work effectively.
- Where things aren’t on track there is a much greater incentive to revise the plan at “year end”. Where this happens four time a year reviews are much more effective than those during a normal twelve month year where there is always the “we will catch up” syndrome to fall back on.
Something I often hear said, and one of the reasons that Moran and Lennington use a twelve week year in order to get out of sync with the normal calendar is as follows: ” We work on quarters and so already do a four period year”. This is true but there is a huge difference between four quarters in a twelve month year and thirteen weeks in four years a year. Where you are using quarters the thought process is still annual. There will be annual targets and objectives broken down into quarters. With the four years a year the thought process is entirely different. One twelve week period should have targets and objects for that period not a bigger one divided into four.
On the face of it this may seem the same thing, but it’s not. If you really adopt the thirteen week year mindset you will see what I mean and reap the rewards.
If you want to know more or see how I can help you with this then please Contact In the meantime. Happy New Year.