How to use Twelve

Start here: your first ten minutes

1. Open Goals & Plan and choose the cycle you want in the cycle selector. For example, choose Make things. Enjoy life. New cycles run Monday–Sunday for 12 weeks. Week 1 means the first week of that cycle, not the calendar year’s week number.
2. Read the goals. Choose results you care about, such as a useful AI application, consistent publishing, and books you remember. Edit a goal to change its target or why it matters.
3. Choose Week 1. Review each suggested action: its definition of done, number of times, duration and area. You can edit, drop or add actions.
4. Enter Hours I have available for this plan. The full starter estimates about 19.1 hours, including care and rest. If you only have ten hours, make a ten-hour plan and leave some room for surprises.
5. Choose Commit this week’s plan when it feels realistic. You do not have to commit all twelve weeks now.
6. Add your current book to My Library. Then use Record on weekly actions as you do them.

A draft is a suggestion. Reduce it before committing if it crowds out sleep, relationships or enjoyment. Adding more checkboxes is not automatically an improvement.

Know what goes where

Choose the right part of your week

• Focus: specific commitments that contribute to your execution score. Use these for the work you decide is essential this week.
• Life & care: cooking, bedtime, skincare, rest and relationships. These remain visible without raising or lowering execution.
• Optional: useful extras, exploration or an outcome you want to notice without scoring it twice.
• Unplanned: something meaningful that came up. It belongs in your record even if it was not a commitment.

How to add an action

In This Week, choose the cycle and week, then + Action. Write a verb and a concrete object: “Publish a Short,” not “Content creation.” In What counts as done?, describe the finish line.

Set Times this week and Minutes each time. A preferred day is a planning cue; it does not create separate calendar appointments. Choose Only this week, Selected weeks, or Repeat weekly from this week, then save.

For example, “Build the upload feature” could be three 60-minute sessions, Focus, AI engineering, only Week 2. Its definition of done could be “One focused implementation or test session, with a brief note about the result.”

Examples for your goals and personal life

These are starting points, not extra obligations. Open the example you need.

A useful note can be three lines: What was it? What stayed with me? What might I try? For a novel, a favourite scene or how it felt is enough. Personal reading does not need to become homework.

A simple weekly rhythm

Use these times as a starting point. Twelve does not automatically schedule these reviews or send reminders.

What to write in your review

What moved forward?

“Published two Shorts, shipped the upload screen, and cooked a new dish.” Include work and personal wins.

What did I learn?

“Editing took twice as long as I expected. Writing both scripts together helped.”

What did I enjoy?

“A slow dinner with a friend and reading without checking my phone.”

What will I change next week?

“Keep two Shorts, reduce AI sessions to two, and leave Saturday evening free.”

Save reflection saves your notes and available hours. Finish weekly review closes the week; it also commits a draft if necessary. Save before switching weeks. If Sunday evening’s activities happen after you close it, reopen the week to add or correct their linked records.

If your week ends messily, review it on Monday. Use the dates things actually happened rather than shifting everything into the new week.

Different weeks should be allowed to look different

Your cycle goals can stay steady while the actions change. For example:

• Week 1: choose an AI project and make a small baseline; study your audience; publish two Shorts.
• Week 2: add one feature and test it; apply a positioning idea; keep the publishing rhythm.
• A busy or travel week: reduce learning sessions, simplify production, and protect the routines that help you feel well.

Edit this week changes that week’s action, not every other week. Use the recurrence choices when adding an action to several weeks.

Drop removes an action from the current commitment while retaining its record and reason. Carry forward moves the remaining count to a later week you choose in the same cycle. If three sessions were planned and one happened, two remain to carry. No missed work silently rolls forward.

After committing, explain changes honestly: “Family visit; two evenings unavailable.” Your original commitments remain visible so reducing a target does not erase the earlier plan.

If you keep missing the same action, ask whether it is too vague, too large, badly timed or no longer important. Make the next attempt smaller and clearer before adding another habit.

What your score means

Execution is completed Focus occurrences ÷ planned Focus occurrences. It describes how closely you followed the plan you chose. It is not a grade for your whole life.

Example: two Shorts + one newsletter + three AI sessions = six planned occurrences. If you publish both Shorts and the newsletter and do two AI sessions, you complete five of six: about 83%. Cooking or resting does not change that percentage.

• Only entries marked Done (Published / sent for publications) count. Saved and in-progress entries do not.
• A log must be linked to the weekly action to affect its count. Its date must be inside that action’s week, and its activity type must match.
• The amount field is detail, not a multiplier. One entry with “2 videos” counts as one occurrence; log two publications separately.
• Each action is capped at its target. Extra reading cannot cancel out an unfinished newsletter.
• Draft progress is provisional. If no Focus occurrences are planned, the score is a dash. If Focus work is planned but none is done, progress is 0%.

Current plan versus original commitments

The current score follows your revised plan. The original score follows the targets saved when you committed. If your only commitment was two Shorts, you reduce it to one and publish one, the current score is 100% and the original score is 50%. Both tell you something useful.

New actions added after commitment can affect the current score, but do not become original commitments. Unlinked activities still belong in your library and recap.

Execution is different from results

Three AI sessions do not automatically mean the application is finished. Goal targets and Current result live in Goals & Plan; update those when the actual result changes. Publication and book totals in My Library are calculated from the records there. The Lead / Lag and other advanced screens are optional; start with the weekly plan and library.

Find everything you did

My Library is your long-term record. Use Filter cycle, then Filter week, to revisit a particular week. Choose Whole cycle for the entire run or All time to look across cycles. Search titles, notes and sources; filter by activity and status.

For example, choose your cycle, Week 3, Content consumed and Done to find what you watched or read. Choose Newsletter written / published to find your own issues. Clear filters if something seems missing.

The bookshelf keeps books across cycles. Its finished count follows the selected time period, while the shelf still shows books you may be reading over several weeks. Current page is updated in the book form; logging pages in a reading session does not automatically update the shelf’s page number.

What happened under the weekly plan is the shorter recap. History keeps past cycles. Existing older cycles retain their original dates and weekly checkboxes; those cannot tell you which individual days you read or exactly what you consumed.

When logging from the library, choose the right cycle. Outside a cycle / inbox keeps an entry available in All time; it will not appear in a particular cycle’s activity list unless you assign it there. Future activities can be saved or drafted, but cannot be marked done before they happen.

At the end of the 12 weeks

1. Finish Week 12’s review. In My Library, select the cycle and Whole cycle.
2. Look at actual output: what you built, published, finished reading, cooked and enjoyed. Revisit a few notes rather than relying on memory.
3. Update your goals’ Current result. Separate the result from how consistently you worked toward it.
4. Ask: What helped? What cost more energy than it gave back? What do I want more of in my personal life?
5. Celebrate something specific and make room to recover. Create the next Monday-starting cycle when ready. Keep what worked; deliberately choose what to leave out.

You can plan an upcoming cycle while finishing the current one. New cycles cannot overlap an existing non-archived cycle. Creating the next cycle does not erase the old one.

When something feels confusing