12-Month Impact Grid

A simple but powerful reflection exercise to identify what truly matters in business by creating a 12-month grid and logging only the most impactful events or decisions.

Core Concept

• Create a 12-box grid representing each month of the year
• Write only the most significant 1-3 things that actually mattered that month
• Must be readable from 10 feet away (big font) - forces focus on truly important items
• Everything else is considered "cost of doing business" or noise

Types of Important Events to Track

• Key strategic decisions
• Major product launches
• Critical hiring/firing decisions
• Important meetings or trips
• Decisions to stop working on projects
• Relationship building with key people
• Investment decisions

Benefits

• Reveals surprisingly few things (1-3) actually matter each month
• Helps identify patterns of what constitutes truly important work
• Improves real-time decision making by understanding what typically "makes it into the box"
• Creates awareness of which current activities might be the month's most important
• Helps distinguish between busy work and impactful work

Implementation Tips

• Don't write things in advance
• Review regularly to spot patterns
• Use it to focus energy on potentially box-worthy activities
• Recognize that most daily activities won't make it into the boxes
• Focus extra attention on items you suspect will end up being that month's key events