Day: 20
Spoke: Career
Habit: Daily Big 3
Honestly guys, I don’t think anything I’ve written about is my original idea. I am just a great copy cat. I’m a hungry student who has an insatiable appetite for more knowledge, and I find great people to follow. So, this idea is not something I came up with. It’s a habit that Michael Hyatt centers a lot of his teaching around, and I have found it works very, very well for me.
I’ve only been doing it a couple months so I still haven’t mastered it on the daily, but the days I use it go so much better.
Each day, I select my top 3 most important tasks. These are NOT the most urgent. They are the most important.
My day is filled to the brim with urgent. People who want me to respond to emails, return phone calls, answer questions and meet their deadlines. However, my full time job is managing a long list of projects for a non-profit. If I am not intentional, I can get behind the 8-ball on my projects because I’m doing the busy work in front of me (like emails) or doing my piece of the pie on other people’s projects so they meet their deadlines.
For the third quarter this year, I purchased the Full Focus Planner and part of using this planner requires that each day you select your top 3 priorities of the day. These are things that YOU must move the needle on to keep all your other goals on target.
I have found that by doing this, other people’s priorities get put on the back burner but my priorities are getting accomplished. And here’s the funny thing about the urgent items, they always find a way to get done. Either you figure out how to squeeze it in or someone realizes you can’t give it the quick attention and they do it themselves or find someone else to do it.
I’ve also found that with this habit, I may also push myself that extra little bit at the end of the day because I see the clock and know my window is closing but these things are still sitting undone.
Today something urgent and unexpected popped up at the end of the day and consumed my last hour. I was frustrated because only 1 of my 3 priorities was done and it was 5:00. But because I had written these tasks down and committed to getting them done so the ball keeps moving on the projects, I just put in the extra half hour. If I had not clearly defined them already, then they may have just been forgotten.
Realistically, I’m probably doing this two or three days a week. However, I’ll get to five or six eventually. This is how all my habits form. I would love to just make a decision and then do the new thing every single day but I don’t. It’s outside the comfort zone. It’s not in the rhythm. I have to spend a period of time in the development stage where I’m remembering sometimes and forgetting other times until the habit sticks long enough that it’s effortless.
There will come a time in the future where there is no trying. I will just not even think about it and will effortlessly jot my three things at the top of the page every morning. It will be as simple as remembering to brush my teeth. But right now, I’m in the messy middle. I’m loving the habit and trying to practice it as much as I can remember to while I stretch outside my comfort zone.