Score your weekly execution
Rate the percentage of planned actions you completed each week, and aim high.
Why it works
A weekly execution score makes effort visible and accountable when the result is still invisible. Because lead behaviors precede outcomes, a consistently high execution score is the earliest reliable signal that the cycle is on track — it turns "did I do the work" into a number you cannot rationalize away.
How to do it
- At week’s end, calculate the share of planned actions you actually completed.
- Treat a high execution score as the goal in itself during the cycle.
- Diagnose a low score: was the plan unrealistic, or did execution slip?
Evidence
Self-monitoring and progress feedback are reliably linked to better goal attainment; a weekly execution score operationalizes that into a single tracked number. The specific scoring practice is Moran’s framework, built on the monitoring principle. (observational)
A high execution score on the wrong actions still fails; the score measures consistency, not whether the plan was correct.
Sources
- Harkin et al. (2016), progress monitoring improves goal attainment (underlying principle)
Common mistake
Scoring execution but never acting on a low number, so the metric becomes a guilt ritual instead of a trigger to re-plan.
Practice this with IX Coach
7 days free, then $40/month (~$1.30/day).
More practices for The 12 Week Year, Made Practical
- Treat 12 weeks as a full year
Replace the distant annual deadline with a 12-week one that creates urgency now.
- Commit to only a few goals per cycle
Choose one to three goals for the 12 weeks so effort concentrates instead of scattering.
- Drive it from a weekly plan
Translate each 12-week goal into the specific actions for this week.
- Track lead and lag indicators
Measure the behaviors you control (lead) alongside the results they produce (lag).
- Hold a weekly accountability review
Spend a short, fixed weekly session reviewing scores and planning the next week.