Why Your Goals Seem out of Reach (and How Qeap Can Help)
What prevents us from reaching the goals we set for ourselves?
One reason is that the time ahead of them stretches on, especially for goals without clear “wins.” A year is a long time, but even a couple of months can seem like forever if you are doing something and not seeing any progress.
We often know how to achieve our goals, but may put them off until we feel a sense of urgency. Then, after several months of procrastinating on a project, people often find themselves rushing to complete what they set out to do earlier in the year. If you’ve ever made a New Year’s resolution and dropped the ball, only to try to pick it up again towards the end of the year, you can relate. It’s no wonder, then, that over 40% of Americans report increased stress levels between November and January as the year draws to a close.
What if you could complete your goal within three months? What if you didn’t have to work for an entire year to reach your yearly goal?
This is the idea behind Qeap, a 13-week program that condenses a yearly goal into 13 weeks of focused, consistent action.
In this blog post, you’ll learn about Qeap and how to apply it to your current goals to make what might seem impossible be a bit more possible.
What Is Qeap?
Qeap is a 13-week program guided by seven principles to accelerate progress toward your goals. The program condenses a year’s worth of work into a 13-week block of time called a Qeap.
Each Qeap spans 25% of a year. So, if you want to start your first Qeap the week of January 1, you can fit four Qeaps into a full calendar year.
That being said, you can start your Qeap at any time, as long as you allocate one week for planning and 12 weeks for taking action.
You can work toward any outcome with Qeap, whether that’s improving your relationship with your boss or a family member, delivering on an important work project, making a lifestyle change, or achieving better work-life balance...or something else entirely.
Why Qeap Helps You Be More Productive
Here are four ways Qeap works to help you get more done – faster.
1. Qeap is all about mindset.
Achieving your goals requires the right mindset. We sometimes get caught up in the planning and do things that make us feel busy but don’t help us reach our goals. That’s why Qeap helps you bias for action: to act in ways that put you closer to your goals, one step at a time, rather than engage in meaningless busywork that feels like action.
2. Qeap helps you stay tackle goals with a sense of urgency.
Qeap helps keep you hyper-focused on shorter timeframes for action by breaking big goals into a series of smaller, achievable milestones. With only one week of planning and twelve weeks of action to complete what you would normally complete in twelve months, Qeap keeps your goals top-of-mind to motivate you to act on tasks and goals.
3. Qeap gives you three extra chances to reach your goal.
Maybe you do not reach your big “New Year’s Resolution” by the end of Qeap’s 13 weeks. That’s okay. With four Qeaps a year, you have several opportunities to reach your goal. This means that if you did not reach your goal in one Qeap, you can reflect on the previous one and try again noting the lessons learned.
4. With Qeap, you learn to prioritize ruthlessly.
Qeap is about working smarter, not harder. If you only have twelve weeks to achieve something, you’ll have to narrow your focus to the things that will bring you toward your goal. That’s why fitting a year’s worth of action and achievement into three months requires you to say “no” more than you say “yes.” You have to say “no” to the good things to say “yes” to the great things.
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundreds of other good ideas that exist. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” --Steve Jobs
The Mechanics of Qeap
You may be wondering: how does Qeap work, exactly?
Qeap helps you achieved a desired outcome, or goal, through smaller actions that help you get there. Let’s talk about that more next.
Throughout the Qeap, you will do what you can to get closer to your outcome, while keeping in mind that you do not always have full control of the outcome.
Let’s say you want the outcome of your Qeap to be feeling more connected to your partner. In this example, your partner plays a big role in how you ultimately feel at the end of the Qeap. This is why Qeap ruthlessly prioritizes action.
With Qeap, you control the actions you take to achieve your goal. Even if the outcome is not totally within your control, the actions you can take 100% are.
Going back to the example of becoming closer with your partner, you could spend an hour with them tomorrow. Or, if your goal is to close a sales deal, you could follow up with ten old clients and propose a new deal. These are achievable actions.
You can change and adjust the actions you take as you go through the Qeap to make sure they are always helping you move toward your desired outcome.
This 13-week cycle repeats four times each year. That means that at four points in the year, you have the opportunity to “set” and achieve your New Year’s Resolution.
The Typical Qeap Timeline
Week 0 – Happy New Qeap!
The first week of the Qeap is actually called “Week 0.” During this week, you plan your upcoming Qeap, coming up with a list of actions to help you achieve your desired outcome.
Yes, Qeap is all about prioritizing action, but having a game plan is important for achieving your goals.
Think of it this way: if you get in your car and start driving with no real destination in mind, you will certainly go somewhere, but will you get to where you wanted to go?
Qeap’s Week 0 gives you the time to look up the directions in Google Maps before you get out on the road, so to speak.
If you just completed a Qeap, this is the time to introspect on what went well, what didn’t go well, and what you might change this time.
In Week 0, you can plan every week of your twelve-week Qeap ahead of time, or go with the flow – whatever works best for you. Let’s say you know you want to consistently make twenty sales calls a week. You can break up your tasks so you make those twenty sales calls each week. Or, if you have a job or lifestyle that prevents you from planning ahead, you can set aside time to plan each week.
Make sure to celebrate this beginning of your new (or renewed, if you’ve completed a previous Qeap) journey!
Week 1-12 – Time for Action
Day in and day out, Weeks 1 through 12 are dedicated to action.
Qeap keeps track of the most important actions—the ones that will contribute to your goal.
At the end of each week, as you calculate your “action score,” you will see what tasks are being completed and which ones are being left to the wayside.
If you are not reaching an ideal action score, you have opportunities at the end of each week, and the end of each Qeap, to adjust. You are not a failure if you do not complete all your actions. Remember, Qeap is not a to-do list but a program to get more done over a period of several weeks.
More about the Qeap Action Score next.
Your Action Score
Every week, in Weeks 1 through 12, you’ll write a list of actions that get you closer to your outcome. Qeap prioritizes completing these actions over anything else.
To know whether you are succeeding, you calculate your action score. That is the percent of actions you have completed out of the ones you had on your list for a given week.
At the end of each week, you take the number of actions you completed and divide it by the number of total actions you set for the week. For example, if you set out to complete 15 tasks during the week, but only completed 10, you would divide 10 by 15 and end up with .667. Your action score is 67%.
A consistent action score of 80% should be good enough to move you toward your outcomes, but aim for an action score of 95% or above.
As the weeks of the Qeap go on, your score will fluctuate.
If you find yourself consistently failing to achieve an 80% action score every week, you’ll have to make some changes to your actions or rethink how you are approaching them.
Mid-Qeap Checkpoint
During Week 6, take extra time to evaluate the first half of the Qeap and what you can change.
Here’s what this might look like if you want to close more deals.
At the beginning of a Qeap, you decide you want to take action by calling 20 clients a week. After Week 1, you call 15 clients and have an action score of 75%. The next week, you call 20 clients and have an action score of 100%. During Week 3-5, your action score consistently stays over 80%.
In Week 6, you should feel very good about your scores. If you find that these calls are leading you to close more clients, you should continue with this Qeap. If, instead, these calls are not converting and you’re no closer to your outcome than you were at the beginning of the Qeap, this is a good week to adjust your actions.
If, during Week 6, you look back and your action scores are all below 80%, you know that you should adjust your actions or the way you are approaching them. You may ask questions like:
- Do I need to call fewer clients?
- Do I need to set aside time in my day specifically for calling clients?
- Would it be useful to delegate tasks to someone on my team so I have more time to call clients?
With abundant opportunities to reflect, experiment, and celebrate, Qeap empowers you to adjust your actions and goals as you go to find the best path to your outcomes sooner.
Do More with Qeap
As humans, we tend to underestimate the complexity of the things we never do and overestimate our strength and ability to do them. Some refer to this as the Dunning-Kruger effect. Others just understand this as a fact of life.
This effect is often why so many people abandon the gym by March or put off achieving their New Year’s Resolution until they are no longer motivated to work on it.
Qeap offers the opportunity to start doing and to see for ourselves how strong we can be, and how much we can achieve. If you want to achieve something this year, you can do it.
Ready for a focused approach to achieving your goals? Qeap offers a refreshing alternative to the yearly grind of New Year’s resolutions. Plan in Week 0, act for 12 weeks, and celebrate your progress. Start your first Qeap today!
0 comments