The 3-Month Rule
Why didn’t I do this sooner?
Every January, millions of people set yearly goals.
By February, most have abandoned them.
I used to set ambitious 1-year goals too, but rarely hit those.
The problem isn’t lack of motivation, and it’s not lack of discipline, either.
It’s how damn long a year is.
It’s easy to lose sight of one-year goals.
But three months?
Now we’re talking.
Three months is long enough to achieve something meaningful, but short enough that the finish line stays visible.
When I started setting three-month targets, I stopped losing momentum because the end is within reach.
It’s also the sweet spot for habit formation. Research shows it takes roughly 66 days to cement a new behaviour. Three months gives you time to build the habit AND see real results from it.
As an example, I have a friend who figured this out years ago.
He’s a course creator who used to struggle, making barely enough to survive.
Then he shifted to operating in three-month sprints.
He became obsessed with three-month cycles. It transformed everything.
He’d go all-in on creating and launching one product every quarter, then take time off.
That shift transformed his business. He went from making peanuts each month to becoming one of the most successful creators in his field.
The pattern I see in people who actually achieve things is that they work in focused blocks, not endless timelines.
This changed my own output dramatically. I went from writing one book every three years to four books per year.
When your goal feels reachable, cool things happen. You gain momentum, you stay motivated, and you actually finish.
Compare that to vague yearly goals or ‘someday’ dreams. The horizon is so far away that today’s actions feel irrelevant. And so they drift.
The key is choosing ONE tangible thing and building a system around it.
One commitment with a repeatable, central habit.
That’s how you go from ‘I wish I could…’ to ‘oh wow, I did it.’
If building an online brand with consistent writing is one of your 3-month goals, you might like my Online Writing Alchemy course.
The course shows you how to write things that make people want to email you, thanking you because you connected with them deeply.
It reveals the 16 secrets I learned over 15 years of writing online articles and books.
Alex
Here's the bit I love the most - He’d go all-in on creating and launching one product every quarter, then take time off.
Right now, this is where I am on a monthly basis. Or at least getting there. I'm doing quite a bit of cleanup and updating work from years of previous content that I've created.
As I move into 2026, I will focus on one theme on Substack. This will be scheduled the month before. Then, 1 workbook or mini-course to support it. Once this is all scheduled for the month ahead, I'll have achieved my goal. For now, I'm happy to keep this to a monthly goal plan. Wishing you and your readers a wonderful end to the year and a brilliant 2026.
Thank you for this reminder! I admit that I was once one of those people who expected that on January 1st their lives would start to change. The truth is that nothing will change as long as a person keeps losing their goals and giving up on them. That's why I stopped procrastinating - if I want to change something, I do it here and now, and not wait for next Monday or the first of the month.