Tried not to work much over Christmas / New Year / My Birthday (yesterday 4 January) but only to allow my subconscious to get to grips with what I want to achieve in the coming 12 week period.
Note: I’m writing this weeknote1 for T.Y. and P.F., in the 25 mins before our first accountability call of 2026. For anybody else reading this: TY, PF and I are following the ideas in the book The 12 Week Year. This will be my fifth 12-week year (12WY).
I’ve re-written by hand in a paper notebook a sense of where I’d like to be in approximately 3 years.
It’s imperative to have some kind of goal: I wrote about that in my book How To Change The World, and have spoken about it in talks about that book. The thing I often say in those talks is that proceeding without some kind of goal is like going to a sea port and stepping aboard any boat and then complaining when you end up somewhere you don’t like. Instead, get on a boat with the destination you want. It’s true that you may not actually arrive – if violent storms put you off course, or whatever – but at least you are heading in the right general direction.
So I need a clear goal. And I am aware how very difficult it is to commit to that: to write it down on paper.
Having described where I might like to be in three years, I need to write something about what I’d like in a year from now – and then just three months (12 weeks).
It’s hard.
But I know from doing the same thing four times last year that I will have much more fun if I know what I’m trying to achieve.
On at least one of those previous 12-week years I didn’t set a clear goal and it was hard to feel I was making progress.
On the other hand, there were times when, satisfyingly, I DID set a goal. For instance: this time last year, as I started my first ever 12WY, I set myself the general goal of “putting on an exhibition of my magnolia pictures” and because the 12-week deadline was getting closer I found myself taking action. I knew I wanted to put on the show before magnolias came into flower (March?), so I approached a gallery and was told that I could have it either in April (too late!) or – well, the very next week, in February.
Yikes. With six days to go, I booked the gallery and started to tell close friends what I was planning. That is: people I’m close to because I’ve known them a long time but also people who are geographically close.
Then I just kind of went bonkers, putting out all kinds of social media and blog posts and publishing newsletters about it. I also printed leaflets and dropped notes into people’s doors, with some success.
Worrying that I didn’t have enough art to fill the gallery I also started painting like a maniac, several new works to fit frames that I had lying around.
Propelled by action, I realised that I would need to set up systems to manage what I was doing.
I made a lot of mistakes, but they were all completely fine because even the mistakes formed part of a pattern that made sense in light of my goal.
I should add (trying to be transparent again) that I also set myself a financial goal, and I worried like hell that the two goals might clash: hiring a gallery is expensive, as is the printing and framing. What if nobody came? What if nobody bought any of my art? I might make a loss – not a small loss but quite a big one.
For reasons that I can’t exactly explain, the goals didn’t clash but fortified each other. The financial goal, for instance, gave me greater confidence in actually asking for money.
I’ve already said that I made mistakes. One of those was about money: how could I know, never having done this kind of thing before, that I would need to put up a list of prices? I mean, it’s obvious with hindsight but I suppose I just thought that people, if they were interested, might just ask me.
So what happened is this: at the private view lots of people arrived at once and I was enjoying watching them look closely at pictures all round the room and then someone asked loudly: How much is this one?
I could tell you that it was mortifying but it wasn’t, really. It threw me a little, that’s all. Without lowering my voice, I told her how much. I don’t absolutely remember which picture it was, but I have an idea that the price was £350 for one of a limited series of prints. And I have a strong memory of my brain going all wobbly as I wondered whether the people who heard me might be thinking either of these things:
- How much?! He’s crazy to think anybody would spend so much?
- How much?! Does he not value his work? What’s his problem?
So anyway.
I said I was writing this for TY and PF. What was the point of that?
Well, to spell out to myself, by writing about it, just how important it is for me to set a goal for the 12-week period ahead of me.
I’ll do that right after our group call, which starts in precisely 3 mins. Watch this space.
After the call
Here, more or less, are the goals I have for the next 12 weeks. They absolutely aren’t finished yet – not enough detail. But it’s a start.
- Make 12 portraits of people in their offices, basically one a week. Offer them to a weekly magazine (proper, traditional media). Create a booklet and audio interview as well as my pictures. Keep all rights. Before starting, tell subjects what the offer is clearly, up front, with specific numbers so there is no uncertainty or negotiation: “I’m doing this anyway, and you’ll get X, Y, Z and you’ll have the opportunity to buy the picture at [PRICE].”
- Put on an exhibition of my portraits, in a gallery.
- Submit the best of them to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
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If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it by email or on social media. Here's the link. Thanks, JPF.
Footnotes:
1 See: A pre-history of weeknotes by Matt Webb.