Happy Sunday Everyone:
I need to see things. The way my brain works, I struggle with data being inside a computer. I struggle with kindles, etc….I like books shelves with books on them. The chances of me going back to a book that’s lodged in my computer to review something compared to looking at the actual book is minimal, I’ll take the hard copy all day.
My CFO and I have a zoom call once a week. We talk about a lot of things around life, it’s a rarity if it’s business as opposed to personal growth. I asked her a while back to read one of my favorite books of 2020, High Performance Habits. 4 weeks ago, she’s shows up on our call with the High Performance Planner, a physical planning book the author put together. Side note-nothing more gratifying than someone taking your advice and then doing something more with it, which is what Ava did here. She started walking me through it, I was so impressed, I ordered one immediately. Fast forward to today, I’m 2.5 weeks into using this thing and I had to share a few thoughts about it. If there was ever a journal that was more committed to being intentional on how you start your day, and how you finish it, I’d like to know what it is.
I’m not going to go into the whole thing except to list the questions on how you start your day.
1. Today’s message to myself:
2. One thing I can get excited about today is….
3. If one word could describe the kind of person I want to be today, then that word is….and why I chose it….
4. someone who needs me on my A-game today is?
5. A situation that might stress me out or trip me up today could be…..and the way that my best self would deal with that is…
6. Someone I could surprise with a note, gift, or sign of appreciation is…
7. One action I could take today to demonstrate excellence or real value is…
8. one thing I could do today that is a little outside of comfort zone is to…
9. if I was a high performance coach looking at my life from a high level, I would tell myself to remember that…..
10. The big projects I have to keep in mind that I want to take on, even if I can’t act toward them today are….
11. I would know that today was a great success if at the end I said, or felt…..
I’m going to stop here but there is a calendar (I do in fact trust the computer for my calendar and that’s not changing), top goals for the day, top tasks, similar questions to how you finish your day, score card around your daily habits.
Net net-I’m now 2.5 weeks into using this hard copy tool and I don’t think I’ve ever been this purposeful in forward thinking about what my day is going to look like. This Sunday Thoughts isn’t to market this guy’s planner, it’s the recognition and reminder that our days are either intentionally purposeful with what we want our day to be or unintentionally reactional to all crap that gets thrown our way because we spend no time planning/envisioning our day.
This exercise has been meaningful for my piece of mind. Little picture daily tactics, to big picture “am I moving in the direction of which I want to go”. Most important for me is it forces me to evaluate how my day went. I’m a monster on my morning rituals, early wake ups, run, pool, mediate, journal….but I turn into a pumpkin at 5:00PM….this is forcing me to keep my head in the game on my intentionality, especially on being present with Kim/Jack/Thomas when I get home.
Enjoy your Sunday….perhaps. you can think a little bit more as to what you want your Sunday to look like.