Productivity Tips #3: Daily Questions

Here is the third tip in this series of productivity ideas. There will be 8 tips in this series. Each of these ideas is something that I use in my own working habits, that has helped me to improve the way I work.

This is a brilliant technique developed by Marshall Goldsmith, who you can find out more about here. There is an example of the technique here. Marshall has developed the idea of a daily log, a set of questions that we ask ourselves to ensure that we stay on track. We are looking for habits that we need to maintain or ones that we are trying to control, reduce or stop. Helpful questions would be things like:

• Did I exercise today? 
• Did I meditate today? 
• Did I show gratitude today? 
• Did I work on my most important project today?

It can also be helpful to have quantifiable questions, so for example I ask myself every day how many emails are in my inbox. This helps me to see when the inbox is getting out of control. I also ask myself how many words I have written each day. Habits can become easier if they become part of this ritual. I also monitor my daily step count, the distance I walked in miles, as this is easy to capture from my smart phone.

I have 12 questions that I routinely ask each day, and they keep me on target, keep me focused on what I should be doing.

Going through the questions each day can help to keep a focus where it is needed. Marshall Goldsmith takes delight in telling everyone that he pays a woman to ring him everyday to ask him these questions and listen without judgement to the answers. Being compelled to answer the questions calls him to account. That’s an amazingly courageous approach. I don’t do that, but I do make sure that I complete the answers for every day (weekends I cut myself some slack, but still keep up with things like meditation practice) and review trends regularly to see whether there are things that I am not getting around to, and need to add in some corrective approach.

This is such a simple technique, but it has so much impact. I strongly recommend that you try it.