Chatting with a friend this morning, we were talking about todo list and being overwhelmed by everything that needs to get done. After sharing with her mindfulness meditation, that helps me keep the “chattering monkeys” at bay and has improved my focus. I mentioned that I’ve gotten away from todo list and now write out the outcome I want from today. Coming up with an outcome for the day can be quite difficult; but once you get the hang of it; the outcome for today will be self evident.
Back on 3/1 I needed to bring this practice back into focus and wrote this note to myself.
In my outcome for the day, I also establish a performance goal for the day. This performance goal can be related to my physical performance while exercising and/or my performance around people. An example of this would be even though my chair is very comfortable, I will do twenty minutes on the rowing machine and lift weight for thirty minutes. It will also include what distance will I do in those twenty minutes, and what weights / sets will I do in my exercise.
My professional outcomes for the day, may be; Catch the problem in production, before the customer catches it. This way, the customer is not surprised when there is an issue. They get an FYI instead of, them sending my team an email saying there is a problem.
The beauty of this is, when you defined the outcome; what you need to do to get that outcome should become self-evident.