Habits - Define Winning the Day

Winning the day should include knocking out at least one item from Fixed Volume Approach to Productivity using a Primary TO-DO list with Limited items

Define Winning the Day

The first is to define winning the day.

Imagine that you sit down to play a game for the first time. Your friend tells you all the rules of the game. He explains how the pieces move and maybe even shares some basic strategy. But if he leaves out one piece of Vital Information, then none of it actually helps. So what is that one thing that you need to know in order to play any game effectively? It is this. You got to know how to actually win the game.

For example, is it the person with the most points, the fewest points, or is it the person who completes the level the fastest? You would play golf very differently if you thought the goal was to get through all 18 holes as quickly as possible. That might actually make it fun.

The truth is, if you don’t know how winning is determined, then it doesn’t really matter what you do, how smart you are, how creative or hardworking you are. Your strategies are useless. Whether or not you actually win the game is going to be determined by blind luck. With this approach, you will not win the game most of the time.

It’s pretty obvious to see why “not knowing how to win” is not a good strategy in the context of a game. But this is exactly how most people are playing the game of Life. Most just never stop to Define what winning the day actually looks like. As a result, they go through the motions, just hoping they get lucky and somehow they stumble into a win. But that’s generally not what ends up happening. Here’s what does.

Since you don’t have a clear idea of what winning looks like, you go through life always feeling like you’re losing, because there’s always more that could be done. This leads most people to experience a state of Perpetual low-grade discontent. In frustration, they never get that euphoric high that comes from winning the championship game.

That sucks, but it is entirely avoidable. If you want to get off the treadmill of psychic discontent, then just take 10 minutes every morning (or the night before) to chalk the field and define for yourself, “what does winning that day look like?”.

Get clear about what it is you want to accomplish. Perhaps more importantly, how you want to accomplish it.

Here’s a pro tip. Make the game easy to win. If you go above and beyond, that’s great. But it’s more important to just get positive momentum, moving in the right direction. When you do that, you get to the end of your day on a high note. This gets you excited to tackle the next day and this creates a virtuous cycle of success.

Habits - Embrace your near wins

Identify your three things

“Take a few minutes before you start the day to write down what are one to three things that would make you consider this day a success. It should be no more than three, and they can include personal goals (i.e., go to the gym, leave by a stated time) or work goals (get the next step of that project done, stay calm no matter what comes my way). Doing this can change your day more than you’d expect. Too often we end days having been busy but not feeling like we achieved enough - but that changes when you have this to evaluate your day by.”

–Marianne Cantwell, author of “Be a Free Range Human: Escape the 9-5, Create a Life You Love and Still Pay the Bills,” and TEDx speaker with 400,000-plus views