12-Minute and Your Schedule (Revisited)

The 12-Minute Series was originally posted in 2012.

We’ve decided to republish it integrally because we believe it can still help as everyone aspires to make things better.

Let’s hope it stirs up the discussion and stimulates you to change the world 12-Minute at a time!

This article was originally posted on March 12, 2012

The 12-Minute Approach can be applied tons of ways to your schedule. We will submit you some ideas here but the possibilities are almost endless.

Why 12 Minutes

Using the 12-Minutes Approach will allow you to be more efficient; doing something different only 12 minutes every day can produce surprising results.

If you break down your day in 12-Minute Periods, you’ll find that there are 120 such Periods:

1 day = 24 hours x 60 minutes =

24 hours x 5 x 12-Minute = 120 x 12-Minute

You can surely spare 1 lousy 12-Minute Period out of 120 to change the world!

In the same way, let’s analyse the hour. Every hour has 60 minutes.

1 hour = 60 minutes = 12-Minute x 5

12-Minute / 60 minutes = 1/5 = 20%

We can relate to this 20% in the Pareto’s Principle or the 80-20 Rule: 
roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. So, by doing the correct actions 12-Minute every hour (20% of the time), you will produce 80% of your results. The trick is to identify those 12 productive minutes and to focus on them.

Break Down Your Schedule in 12-Minute Periods

Instead of the classic 15-minute periods, break down your schedule in 12-Minute Periods. That way, you’ll have 5 periods every hour instead of 4.

Breaking down your schedule in 12-Minute Periods will allow you to do a bit more every hour. You’ll often find time to squeeze an extra action or activity here and there.

After a while, the 12-Minute Approach will also free up some time to take more breaks. You’ll be even more productive after that. 

Balance Between Needs and Activities

For most people, time can be divide between two main categories: Basic Needs and Activities. 

Our theory : 
to remain happy and effective in the long run, on average, time must be evenly split between your needs and activities. 

So, every day, you should take about 12 hours to fulfill your needs (sleep, eat, dress, wash, rest...) and the remaining 12 hours should be used to practice your activities (work, read, study, play...).

If you deviate too much from this kind of balanced schedule, be prepared at some point, to suffer the consequences.

Then, if you spend too much time on your needs, you won't be able to accomplish enough.
And to the opposite, if you focus too much on your activities, you probably won't be able to sustain the pace in the long term. 

So, working 12 hours everyday may not be a good idea unless somebody else takes care of some of your basic needs. 

Because our needs change throughout our life, we must adapt our activities.

For instance, children need to sleep much more than adults. Thus, to maintain children's balance with activities, their parents must take care of most of their basic needs. 

In fact, taking care of others’ needs can be a very fulfilling activity.    

Here’s a summary of my own daily schedule:

Notes : Estimated times are averaged over the week. So I don’t necessarily work on my blog 24 minutes every day; my blog takes an average of 2 hours every week (2x12-Minute x 5 days). Weekends are excluded. 

We see that my schedule is evenly balanced between my needs and my activities. 
I also have 12-Minute to spare every day!

12 Just The Right Number

After using the 12-Minute Approach for a while, you’ll see that 12 often seems like just the right number. We’ve already exposed above the virtue of 12-Minute and 12 hours; but 12 days/weeks/months/years are also interesting.

For one thing, we could observe that most people take 12 days to adapt to a new situation or environment.

Exercise or training programs are optimal when sustained over 12 weeks. After that, some type of reward and a change of pace are desirable.

Business improvements become part of your company’s culture after 12 months. 

If the same way, your life can often be divided in 12 years stages; as for your career, it’s likely that it will take 12 years before you become efficient and really good at what you do.

We hope that these quick examples inspire you to look at things the 12-Minute Way!

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