Plan the Last 60 Days of the Year: A Simple Q4 Sprint

The best way to plan the last 60 days of the year is to stop treating them as a leftover and run them as a short sprint: pick one or two finishable goals, break them into weekly tasks, and score your follow-through every Sunday. Today is November 2, so you have roughly eight and a half weeks before the year ends. That is enough time to finish something real, if you plan it now.

Why the last 60 days deserve their own plan

Year-end has two problems. The holiday season fills your calendar, and the "I'll start fresh in January" feeling makes it tempting to coast. A 60-day window fixes both. It is short enough that you will not drift into new projects, and long enough to make serious progress, as one 60-day goal-setting guide (opens in a new tab) puts it.

The same guide counts about 43 weekdays and 8 weekends in a 60-day window. Once you subtract travel, family events and sale-season errands such as 11.11, Black Friday and 12.12, the number of weekends with real focus time is smaller, often just three to six. Plan for that reality, not for the calendar you wish you had.

Step 1: Review the year and cut hard

Start with 30 minutes and a blank note. List every goal you set in January, then sort them into three groups:

• Still worth finishing (keep at most three to five on the shortlist).
• No longer matters (archive it without guilt).
• Belongs to next year (park it in a "January" list).

A September-sprint planner (opens in a new tab) suggests the same move: review the year, keep only the goals that are still salvageable, and write a "not doing" list. That last list is the secret weapon. Writing "I will not start a new side project before December 31" protects your two real goals from your own enthusiasm.

If you struggle to keep going once motivation fades, our guide on how to stop giving up pairs well with this step.

Step 2: Choose one or two finishable goals

The 60-day guide above recommends a maximum of two goals, because with more than two, one tends to quietly starve the other. It also offers four filters for any candidate goal:

1. Finishable: you can name what will exist when it is done.
2. Under your control: it depends mainly on your actions, not on someone else saying yes by a deadline.
3. Sized correctly: it fits in about four weekends of focused work.
4. Bad-week resilient: it still finishes if one week is lost.

Prefer output goals over habit goals. "Publish the 10-page onboarding guide by December 15" is a better sprint goal than "write every day", because you can tell when you are done.

Try a quick test before committing. State the goal in one sentence, then ask what will exist on December 31, who has to approve it, how many focus weekends it needs, and what happens if one whole week disappears. If any answer is vague, shrink the goal.

Step 3: Turn each goal into weekly tasks

A goal becomes real when it has a date. The 12 Week Year (opens in a new tab), a system introduced by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington in their 2013 book, treats a short cycle as a full "year" and distributes the actions needed across the weeks so each week has a defined set of tasks. You do not need the whole system to borrow that idea.

Here is a simple template for a 60-day sprint:

Put the checkpoint in week four deliberately. The 60-day guide notes that sprints often stall around day 40, so a day-30 check lets you adjust scope while there is still time.

Give every weekly task a due date, not just a week label. Add buffer for roadblocks: the 12 Week Year material recommends realistic due dates, anticipated obstacles and buffer time in each week's plan.

Step 4: Protect your focus time

Tasks do not get done just because they exist. Reserve specific blocks for them. If you have never done this, read our guide to time blocking and book two or three blocks per week for each goal, ideally at the time of day when your energy is highest.

Inside each block, work in short, timed rounds. The Pomodoro technique is a good fit for sprint work because it limits the urge to polish forever. When unexpected requests arrive, which they will in December, use the Eisenhower Matrix to decide quickly whether something is urgent, important, or safe to decline.

Step 5: Score your week every Sunday

The most useful habit in the 12 Week Year is the weekly score. According to the monday.com summary, you calculate an execution score at the end of each week: the percentage of planned tasks you completed. It measures actions, not results, so you can improve it even when outcomes are out of your hands. The same source attributes an 85% target to Moran and says consistently scoring below that is a sign the plan or the execution needs adjusting.

Here is a ten-minute Sunday routine:

1. Count the tasks you planned for the week and the tasks you finished.
2. Divide finished by planned to get your score.
3. Write one sentence on what blocked you.
4. Move unfinished tasks forward or delete them honestly.
5. Plan next week's tasks with dates.

Do not treat a low score as failure. Treat it as information. If you keep missing tasks, you have probably planned too many, and the fix is to cut scope rather than to work later at night.

A realistic example

Suppose Mai wants to finish a portfolio website and complete a certification course by December 31. She writes "no new projects" on her not-doing list. She splits the website into pages, assigns one page a week, and schedules two 50-minute blocks every Tuesday and Saturday. The course gets three short sessions per week. Her week-four checkpoint shows the course is behind, so she moves its final project to week eight and lowers its weekly target. Because she scored herself every Sunday, she noticed the problem early instead of in late December.

This example is illustrative, not a case study, but the pattern holds: fewer goals, dated tasks, a checkpoint and a weekly score.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Starting too many goals. Two is the ceiling for most people.
• Choosing habit goals as the finish line. You cannot "complete" a habit, so you never know if the sprint worked.
• Ignoring the holidays. Mark travel and family days on your calendar first, then plan around them.
• Skipping the buffer week. Something will slip. Leave the final week open.
• Never reviewing. Without a weekly look back, small delays become big ones.

FAQ

How many goals should I set for the last 60 days?

One or two. The 60-day guide cited above says two is the most most people can carry without one starving the other, while the 12 Week Year material suggests two to three goals per cycle. When in doubt, choose fewer.

Is it too late to start in November?

No. Eight weeks is enough to finish a well-scoped project, and a short window can actually help because it creates urgency. If your goal is too large, finish a slice of it that you can complete and name.

What is a good weekly execution score?

The 12 Week Year material cited above mentions 85% as a target. Treat it as a guide, not a grade: if you are far below it, reduce your weekly task list before you try to work harder.

What should I do if I fall behind in week four?

Use the checkpoint. Re-scope the goal, move the lowest-value tasks to January, and protect the tasks that move the finish line. Do not add new goals to compensate.

Start your sprint with Simple Todo

You can run this whole sprint in Simple Todo: add each weekly task with a due date, set reminders (including through the Telegram bot), see the weeks on the calendar view, and use the built-in Pomodoro timer during your focus blocks. Write your goals and your not-doing list in a note, and your Sunday review will take only a few minutes.

Cover photo: Photo: marijana1 / Pixabay