“What you are aware of you are in control of. What you are not aware of is in control of you.” – Anthony DeMello
First of all, thank you 🙂
The response to our first two emails has been overwhelmingly positive, and it feels great to be writing again.
We’ve been on the philosophical side so far, which has been fun.
But today, let’s get a bit more practical.
I’d like to give you a simple ~5 minute habit I call “The Daily Review” that has given me a surprising boost in productivity, discipline, and internal confidence over the past ~8 months.
I say surprising, because it’s so simple that I often feel like I don’t need to do it.
Then I stop, my performance decreases, I start again, and my performance increases again.
Funny how that works 🙂
Anyway, here’s what it is:
Throughout the day, I write down my…
1. Metrics:
My core, daily activities that drive progress forwards.
(different for everyone, of course — my primaries are meditation/QiGong practice, timed blocks of work, and training sessions)
2. Wins:
Stuff that went well and deserves feeling good about.
3. Insights:
Realizations that came up and deserve remembering.
I use Evernote for this, but you can use paper and pen, or the notes app in your phone, or whatever works best for you.
Here’s what it ends up looking like (screenshot from earlier this week):
Then, before bed (usually while I’m brushing my teeth), I read through it and acknowledge all the awesome stuff that happened that day, as well as all of the insights I want to internalize.
And… That’s it.
Simple, right?
But surprisingly powerful.
If you’re curious, here are a few reasons I think this works so well:
1. I define confidence as “the ability to trust yourself.”
This has nothing to do with shouting affirmations or saying kind, cozy words in your head all day long.
Trust is earned through proof, which means doing what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it.
So this daily log gives you real, hard proof that you are acting like the person you want to be — which in turn, builds real, internal confidence.
2. Discipline improves fastest (and is most fun) when it’s gamified.
Back in high school, I became addicted to lifting weights when I saw my strength going up every week.
I couldn’t wait to get back in the gym and see my numbers keep climbing.
When I read through my metrics every night (meditation time, training sessions, work blocks, etc) I feel that same spark of continual, long-term improvement.
(advanced trick — I just started counting up my key metrics for the week and plotting the weekly totals on a chart, so I have a visual representation of my output over time. Guess what happened? My totals started increasing. Geekery pays off…)
Finally:
3. Progress comes from making small, incremental improvements on a specific set of tasks, over a long period of time.
That “long period of time” thing is what trips most people up.
Mastery is an infinite path, after all.
And if you’re not acknowledging your small wins along the way, motivation can fizzle out pretty quickly.
So that’s what this daily review is for:
It’s a simple way to continually reinforce and add momentum to the things you want to improve.
Before long, positive momentum takes hold, and you’re moving in a smooth, unbroken rhythm towards your vision.
We could keep listing more reasons why this works…
(like how insights are easily forgotten and need to be quickly written down and revisited later, to be internalized)…
…But I don’t want this one to get too long 🙂
After all, you’ve got a daily review to begin.
Starting it takes like 30 seconds… And then a moment or two here and there throughout your day.
So there’s no reason not to do it.
I’m always tweaking and evolving and experimenting with the way I construct my own daily review — so if you come up with any new twists on it, I’d love to hear.
In the meantime, have an amazing one over there and I’ll see you back here tomorrow.
– T
