Do you top and tail your day with a plan of action and a review of how you got on?

Most of us find it a challenge to get really organised with a “to do” list, and get depressed at the end of the day when we feel we haven’t completed a fraction of what we set out to do.

Consider your last working week.  Confession time. Did you achieve (or exceed) your targets for each day? Did you even have targets for each day? Or did you get home feeling like you had spent your time fire fighting, dealing with unexpected crises, and fighting back the incoming tide of emails? And how did you deal with all the well-meaning interruptions from people apologising profusely for interrupting you and promising not to take up more than 2 minutes of your precious time?

A technique I have found really useful is to try starting and ending your day with a standard set of questions. This will give you a good framework and avoids the problem you may have if you attempt to write a random list of actions on a blank piece of paper.

In my next blog, I’ll give you a suggested list of questions to end your day. I’ll also be doing a blog on how to deal with the never-ending interruptions to your day.

In this blog I’ll give you some tips for how to start your day! Here are some ideas to get you going before you start your day’s work:-

1. What is my main goal today?

2. What will be the main outcome of that goal?

3. Who do I need to engage with to achieve that goal?

4. How will I know my goal is achieved?

5. Who will I encourage?

6. How will I build trust?

7. How will I make a difference for my team or organisation?

8. How will I communicate with my team?

9. What will I learn?

I believe that by applying this discipline to the start of each working day, you will discover more clarity, focus and success.

Try it and let me know how you get on!