“Simply pushing harder within the old boundaries will not do.” — Karl Weick quotes

Your Outcome: Create space in your life to renew and recharge.  By setting boundaries and buffers, you set yourself up for sustainable results and you take a significant step toward mastering your work-life balance.

Welcome to day 7 of 30 Days of Getting Results.  Inday 6, we learned how to use Friday Reflection to skillfully take a look at what’s going well and what to improve.  Today, I had to ask myself, what’s the most useful nugget I can share with you at this stage?  I think the answer is — setting boundaries and buffers.  This is how you create space in your life and make time for what’s important.  It’s at the heart of finding your peaceful calm and finding your flow.

A Quick Recap of What We Learned So Far …
Before we start though, let’s take a moment to recap some things we’ve learned so far:

1. You can use The Rule of 3 to avoid getting overwhelmed.
2. You’re the author of your life and you can write your story forward, one moment or one day at a time
3. You can use three stories to drive your day and and light up your day by connecting to your values (Daily Outcomes).
4. On Mondays, you can use three stories to drive your week (Monday Vision).
5. On Fridays, you can use Friday Reflection to celebrate your wins and find your personal success patterns.
6. You can map out what’s important in your life using Hot Spots to create a meaningful map.
7. You can let things slough off with skill … no more straws breaking the camel’s back .

Agile Results is a system that can support you the rest of your life, no matter what you do.  I use it for shipping stuff at Microsoft, leading teams, writing books, learning, etc.  The beauty though, is not just that it’s simple, or that it’s proven …  it’s that each day you get a new chance at bat – a fresh start.  Each day you wake up is another chance to ask the question, “What are three things you want for today?” … and so youwrite your story forward.

Buffers and Boundaries are the Key to Work-Life Balance
Now then, on to setting up boundaries and buffers.  If you can master this, it’s THE key to work-life balance, and it’s how you can get more done, in less time, with more energy, and it’s how you can find your flow.  If you feel overwhelmed by too much to do, and not enough time, buffers and boundaries will set you free. At the end of the day, it’s about knowing what you ultimately want and balancing your competing wants and needs against that.

Keep this in mind — you have to Protect yourself – and boundaries and buffers are your friend.  Nobody will set effective boundaries for you, and you know the most about yourself better than anyone.  This is the ultimate care and feeding of yourself, which sets the stage for everything you do.

Mental Model for Boundaries and Buffers
Here is a simple mental model for thinking about buffers and boundaries:

Note that you have to set your own boundaries that work for you.  This is just an example of how some people have found a way to perform well at work, spend more quality time with those they love, invest in their body, and find a way to spend time on their passions again … and remember that one person’s minimum is another person’s maximum.

3 Steps to Setting Up Boundaries and Buffers
Here are three simple steps for setting up your boundaries and buffers:

• Step 1. Set up time boundaries for your week.   Keep this at the high level.  Decide the maximum time to spend on work.  Decide the minimum amount of time you should spend on your body.  For example, if you’re not getting enough sleep, decide that you’ll get a minimum of 6 hours or 8 hours or whatever you need to perform your best.  If you want to get your best results and have a sustainable life style, don’t compromise on eating, sleeping, and working out.  Trade something else where you can.  The simplest rules I’ve heard for setting limits on work are “Dinner on the table at 5:30” and “weekends off.”
• Step 2. Set time limits for your daily routines.   For the things that you do regularly, figure out how much time you should spend on it.  Don’t default to how much time you already spend on it.  Decide how much time is reasonable based on where you are at and what you want to accomplish.  Balance that against your other competing demands and set simple time limits.  For example, when I run, it’s 30 minutes, but periodically an hour.  When I blog, I give myself 20 minutes maximum on average, except for the occasional “heavy hitter post.”
• Step 3. Build in space.   Create space in your life.  This is key – if you’re always feeling harried or under the gun, then you don’t have effective buffers or boundaries.  You need to build in some space.  For example, I need my alone time on Sundays and either early in the days during the week, or later at night.  it’s how I recharge.   When I drive to work, I give myself 30 minutes to get to there, though it usually takes  closer to 15.  I don’t want to race against the clock.  I eat breakfast slowly, I take the back way, and I plan my outcomes for the day, while enjoying the ride (and of course, playing my favorite tunes.)  I don’t blog on weekends, except for the occasional exception (I’m making exceptions while I work on 30 Days of Getting  Results.)  Copy machines and I don’t get along, so I print off stuff for my meetings well in advance.  One of my favorite rules here is “Tuesday night is date night” and everything has to fit around that.  Keep in mind there are always lots of reasons and lots of excuses why we can’t create space.  That’s no the challenge here.  The challenge on the table is — find a way to make space — “how can you create space in you life?”

Stepping back, I can tell you that the most important pattern I’ve seen across people that get more of what they want from life, is that they fix time for eating, sleeping, and working out – and everything else fits around that.  They never rob themselves here – it’s their foundation and platform for all results in their life.

Example of Setting Boundaries in Hot SpotsTry using “Hot Spots” (Mind, Body, Emotions, Career, Financial, Relationships, and Fun) and setting boundaries like this.  Set a max on career and a min on relationships, body, and fun.  For example

• Mind
• Body – minimum of 3 hrs
• Career – maximum of 50 hrs
• Financial
• Relationships – minimum of 3 hrs
• Fun – minimum of 3 hrs

You can only spread your life force over so much.  The categories support each other.

Key Insights

1. When you set a minimum in the right categories, you avoid getting unbalanced and improving other categories.  When you set a maximum in the right categories, you learn how to become more effective.  For example, if you only have 8 hours to throw at your day, you’ll use them wisely.
2. The worst mistake it to throw more time at problems.
3. The key is to reduce time spent, while increasing value and improving effectiveness/efficiency.

So step one is deciding to spend no more than 50 hours each week at work.  Now it forces you to bite off only what you can chew.  This is how you start improving plate management and pushing back effectively.

Why Use Time to Set Boundaries
It’s the simplest way to avoid spending $20 on $5 problems.

One of my most important lessons is that the best way to set boundaries is to use time.  Treat time as a first class citizen.  It’s pretty reliable too – each day you get 24 hours.  Each week you get 7 days or 168 hours.  And the cycle repeats itself, each day, each week.  So if you can master your day, you can master your week – and looking at your time from a weekly standpoint helps you establish a schedule that works for you.

I used to be very “scope-driven.”  I wanted to change the world.  The problem is that when you drive from scope, you often run out of time, then you have to cut corners you don’t want to cut.  Worse, you often push past your boundaries (“I’ll eat lunch later”, or “I’ll stay up later to finish this one last thing”, or “I can’t take a break now,” etc.  Worse, when you don’t respect time, not only do you throw time at problems and re-enforce bad habits … you miss windows of opportunity.  I’ve found that a stitch in time actually saves way more than nine … and that it’s the key to effective results.

This is a key shift from it’s done when it’s done or it takes as long as it takes, to how much time do you have for it and how much time is worth spending on that and how much is too much time to spend on that?

One way to think about this is that time is a budget, just like your money.  You only have so much.  You can spend it wisely, or you can let it rule you, or you can waste it.  Time is a unique resource that you don’t get back and choosing how you spend your discretionary time is what ultimately changes your life.  If you want to spend more time in something, then make more time for something.  The way to do so is to set smart limits on the things you know you need to do.  Trade your time by design vs. by default.

Today’s Assignment

1. Choose an area in your life that’s not working for you and try setting a new limit.  This might mean setting a maximum amount of time in something, or a minimum amount of time in something else.
2. Find one simple way to add space in your life and take it for a test drive next week.

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“I’ve found that small wins, small projects, small differences often make huge differences.” –  Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Your Outcome: Celebrate your wins and find your personal success patterns.  Learn a simple way to practice your attitude of gratitude while growing your ability to get meaningful results.

Welcome to day 6 of 30 Days of Getting Results.  In day 5, we created a simple map of what’s going on in our life so that we could improve our focus and invest our time and energy more effectively.  Today, we reflect on our past week.  I call this practice Friday Reflection.  It’s part of the Monday vision, Daily Vision, Friday Reflection pattern from my book, Getting Results the Agile Way.

Friday Reflection is a simple but powerful practice.  For Friday Reflection, simply think about your past week and identify three things going well and three things to improve. It’s a chance to celebrate your wins, no matter how small.  It’s also a chance to figure out what’s not working for you.  Whatever you learn, you can carry forward into the next week, and use this to continuously improve your results each week.   It’s a snowball of success.

3 Steps to Friday ReflectionHere are three simple steps to perform your Friday Reflection:

• Step 1. Ask yourself, what are three things going well? The key here is to look at your approach.  You can’t always control your results.  Instead, focus on whether you made smart plays based on what you wanted to accomplish.  Pat yourself on the back for making your best moves, independent of the results.  No matter how good a baseball team is, you win some, you lose some.  The best you can do is play your best.  Where you made smart moves, pay attention to why it worked and how you can use it in the future.
• Step 2. Ask yourself, what are three things to improve? This is the tough question, but it’s important to own it, and look at it objectively.  Once you put it down on paper, you don’t need to over-analyze it.  You simply need to see if you can identify the root cause, but then more importantly, identify some specific ways to improve.  Brainstorm here and let your imagination run wild.  The key is to quickly shift to “how” questions, don’t keep asking “why?”  For example, “How can I be more effective in that situation? … or “How can I be more resourceful when that happens again?” … or “How can I prevent that from happening in the first place?”
• Step 3. Identify what you’ll change next week.   You’ll likely come up with a laundry list of simple things you can test to improve your results.  Just pick a few you really care about and add them to your bag of tricks.  Rather than over-analyze your ideas, just write down a few things that you can test next week and get feedback on.  The idea is to learn and improve, not beat yourself up, or wallow in pity.

I recommend adding a reminder to your calendar and blocking off time for it.  If you don’t, it’s easy to forget to do it.  If you schedule it, it will happen, and it’s one of the simplest ways to improve your results every week.

Example of Friday ReflectionHere is a quick example of my Friday Reflection:

3 Things Going Well …

1. I got great feedback from a lot of people inside and outside of Microsoft how 30 Days of Getting Results is helping them achieve more meaningful results.
2. I added key people to my network at Microsoft that have very effective ways of getting results.
3. I effectively anticipated just about every possible surprise this week and had a fallback plan.

3 Things to Improve …

1. I had the wrong lens, model, and map for looking at a few scenarios, which limited my effectiveness.
2. I didn’t checkpoint a few of my key assumptions with the right people as early as I could have.
3. I didn’t reset expectations appropriately in a few cases, which would have saved me some extra work and backtracking.

As far as a few things I’ll change next week, I’ll be asking a lot more pointed questions next week regarding people’s their model and their map.    I’ve been quick to expose my thinking and vision, but now I’ll be testing other people’s assumptions, their operating models, their vision, their timeframes, and gaining clarity on understanding how they test their success or what their rules are for what good looks like.  It should be interesting.  I’ll also be studying up against on effective argumentation as well as rhetoric (the art of arguing without anger.)

Why Friday ReflectionThis is the perfect opportunity to take a look at the patterns in your week.  If you’re not achieving what you set out to do for the week, why not?  Are you biting off more than you can chew?  Are you letting other things get in the way?  Are you figuring out the right things to get done?  Are you making the right trade offs?   As you pay attention to these patterns, you’ll find you will improve your ability to anticipate, you’ll get a better handle on your capacity, and you’ll improve your ability to focus, prioritize, and achieve the results you want, while responding to things with skill, instead of reacting.

Aside from naturally improving your ability to get results, you’ll also improve your outlook.  Too many people look at only the upside or the downside of their week.  Looking at three things going well and three things to improve gives you a more balanced view, and your wins will build momentum, while your lessons learned will support you in all areas of your life.

Today’s Assignment

1. Schedule a recurring 20 minute appointment with yourself for Friday’s for reflection on your results.  I recommend making this something you do earlier in the AM versus later in the day.  Your clarity will serve you for the rest of the day and start you off on the right foot.
2. Identify your three things going well and your three things to improve.  Celebrate those wins!

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“One reason so few of us achieves what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power.”—Tony Robbins

Your Outcome: Learn how to use Hot Spots to create a simple map of what’s going on in your life.  Use your Hot Spots map as a way to invest your time and energy where it really counts, and to know that you’re on your path.

Welcome to day 5 of 30 Days of Getting Results.  In day 4, we look at letting things go with skill.  Today, we look at mapping out what’s important.  I call this practice Hot Spots and it’s from my book, Getting Results the Agile Way.

Hot Spots are a way to see the forest from the trees.  The simplest metaphor is to think of your life as a heat map.  Take a moment to actually imagine a heat map.  On this heat map, if I were to ask you, what’s going on at work, what would you see?   If I were to ask you, what’s going at home, what would you see?  If I were to ask you to step back and look across your life, what would you see?

I used those three levels for a reason: work, home, and life.  Your ability to quickly see what’s going on in each area of your life, will help you make better trade-offs across the board.

Mental Model for Hot Spots
Here is a simple mental model for thinking about your Hot Spot map:

There are three things to notice here:

1. There are three separate lists: Life Frame, Work, and Personal.  These are three simple lists that help you figure out what’s going on in your life.
2. Notice the “Backlog” category under Work and Personal.  This is a way to put everything that’s not active, off your plate.  You can acknowledge that you have a lot of projects at work or personal projects, but if they aren’t active in your life, then they are part of your “backlog.”   Don’t mix them up with what’s really on your plate right now.
3. The Life Frame is a durable set of categories that is relatively stable over time: Mind, Body, Emotions, Career, Financial, Relationships, and Fun.  If you invest in these areas, they support each other.  If you don’t invest in these areas, they work against you.  For example, try being your best when you let your body go, or try doing well at work, if you don’t build your relationships, or try having fun if you let your emotions run your life.

3 Steps to Map Out Your Hot SpotsFor the purpose of this exercise, just think of your Hot Spots as simple lists.  We’ll create three simple lists to answer the question, “What’s on your radar?”.  Here are the steps to follow:

• Step 1. Map out your Work Hot Spots.  Write down a list of your key roles, your activities, and your projects.  Keep it at the macro level.  This isn’t a dump of all your tasks.  It’s the buckets, not all the items inside the buckets.  For example, for work, I would list my main projects: “Common Catalog,” “Simple IA,” “Azure Security Notes,” “Customer Connected Engineering,”, etc.  I turn themes of work into projects, and I give them a name.  Making them projects gives them a start and finish, and helps me identify outcomes for the project, and measure the impact.
• Step 2. Map out your Personal Hot Spots.  Write down a list of your key roles, your activities, and your projects at home.  For example, for persona, I would list some of my main projects: “Getting Results,” “RV,” “Backyard,” .etc.  Don’t worry about getting the order right – just dump what’s on your mind.
• Step 3. Map out your Life Hot Spots.  Write down the key areas or “big rocks” in your life that are important.  Make this a quick exercise and simply list out your top list of areas that are important in your life.  For example, I tend to list: mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships, and fun (I refer to this list as my Life Frame, because it acts like a lens to helps me frame out or look at the big areas in my life in a simple way.  Feel free to use my list as a starting point.  It’s easy to swap things out or add, such as adding a “Spirit” category or a “Community” bucket.  I lump “Community” under my relationships bucket, but what’s important is that the categories make sense for you.

Congratulations – you just created more clarity in your life than many businesses or people do in a life time!

3 Keys to Great Hot Spot Maps

1. Don’t try to put your lists in any clever order.  It actually breaks it.  What’s important is that each list actually resonates with you when you look at it.  The order things are listed should simply be the order you would rattle them off the top of your mind.  Don’t try to alphabetize them or put them in any logical order.  They should simply reflect your mind.  I can’t emphasize that enough.
2. Stick the things you aren’t really spending any time or energy on under your backlog.  You might find that you have really long lists.  That’s OK.  It’s a process.  What’s important is now you have a map of what’s going on in your life, from three views — work, personal, and life.   If things on your list, really aren’t active, then move them down your list under a heading you call “Backlog.”

Using Your Hot Spots to Invest Your Time and Energy
You can now look easily scan across what’s on your radar and instead of trying to remember what you were trying to do, you can step back and say, what’s worth doing or where do I need to spend more time or energy?  In other words, now with your life portfolio in your hands, you can choose where to invest and where to de-invest at a glance.

By asking yourself some very simple questions, you can test your investments.  For example, are you spending enough time or energy in relationships?  Are you giving your body enough rest and relaxation?  Are you challenging your body enough?  Are you making time for fun or for play?, etc.

The key to investing wisely, is simply to answer the question, “Why?” … and then cross-checking by asking the question, “What do you want to accomplish?”  Your mind can find the answers when you ask the right questions.  If your mind can’t find the right answers, then pair up or find somebody you trust how can.

Today’s Assignment

1. Review your Hot Spot maps for work, personal, and life and improve them until you feel they truly represent what’s going on in your life.  They should be simple and scannable.  They are not your outcomes, they are not your tasks, they are simply a list of the activities or projects or big rocks in your life.
2. Explore some of the examples of Hot Spots in Chapter 4 – Hot Spots, from Getting Results the Agile Way.
3. Pick one area that you could invest less in to invest more in another area.  Identify why you would want to make this shift.  This is your chance to deliberately improve an area of your life through a conscious investment and managing your life portfolio in a smart way by taking a look from the balcony.

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“Sometimes you have to let go to see if there was anything worth holding on to.” – Anonymous

Your Outcome: Learn how to let things go with skill.  By letting things “slough off”, you improve your ability to focus on what counts and you make room for YOUR best results.

Welcome to day 4 of 30 Days of Getting Results.  In day 3, we looked at using three stories to drive your day.  Today we look at letting things slough off.  Letting things slough off simply means either letting things go from your plate either by design or as a natural process of focusing on higher priorities.  This is the key to starting each day with a fresh start.

If you don’t let things slough off, the problem is you weight yourself down.  This is the problem of big “To Do” lists, which either turn into lists of things that never get done, or you spend all your time managing your list of things to do, but never getting anything done.  If you’re a slave to your “To Do” list, or if you fear the sheer magnitude of its size, it’s not working for you!

Even if you could do it all, you can’t do it all at once.  You only have so much time and energy in the day.   If there’s one take away from all this remember that it’s the achievements under your belt AND the journey that you look back on.

3 Keys to Letting Things Slough Off
There are three keys to letting things slough off with skill:

1. Each day, create a new “To Do” list.   Start with a fresh “To Do” list each day.  These are your Daily Outcomes.  A simple way to do this is use a new piece of paper and write your three outcomes at the top.  If you’re using an electronic system, then simply create a new file and name it with today’s date.  For example,  for Wednesday, August 4th, 2010, I would simply name it: 2010-08-04.  I use this approach so that I can sort it easily and flip back through my previous days whenever I want.  Rather than automatically add everything from the day before, only carry over what you think is an absolute priority for today – and let the rest go.  The key here is to focus on what’s valuable now from today’s vantage point, checking against what you want to accomplish for the overall week.
2. Each week, create a new “To Do” list.  Start with a fresh “To Do” list each week.  These are your weekly outcomes.  Identify the three results that you really want for your week and write those down.   Simply grab a new piece of paper each week and write down your three main outcomes.  If you’re doing it electronically, then each Monday, create a new file and name it the current date.  For example, Monday, August 9th, 2010 would be: 2010-08-09.  This let’s you scroll back through your weekly lists of outcomes.  This is how you implement the Monday Vision practice from Getting Results the Agile Way.
3. Focus on flowing value.  The real key to letting things slough off is focusing on flowing value.  Instead of focusing on your list of things to do or just getting things done, focus on flowing value.  Focus on your most extreme value and let the rest go.  Value is in the eye of the beholder.  It could be value to you, or to your family, or to your team, or to your company.  Simply by thinking in terms of your “wins” each day, each week, etc. you shine the light on your most important victories.  One way to always get back on track is to ask, “What your next best thing to do?”  Another question to ask is, “What do you want to accomplish?”

The pattern here is to shift your focus to what’s important now based on what you want to accomplish.   The other thing to remember is that if you let something go, and it truly is vital, it will continue to resurface.  You can then deal with it when it makes the most sense.

Set Up Boundaries in Time and QuantitySetting up boundaries is another key to letting things slough off with skill:

1. Set a limit in terms of quantity.  For example, can you prioritize your top three things? … your top 5?, etc.  Instead of making a laundry list, can you make your ‘short list.”  The Rule of 3 is your friend for setting limits whenever you are overwhelmed by quantity and you have to let things go.  If you’re a blogger, you might decide that your post will be no longer than two paragraphs or a list of 10 items.
2. Set a limit in terms of time.  You can set limits in terms of time.  For example, you can decide up front that you’ll spend no more than 20 minutes on that.  Or you might decide that after a week, it’s just diminishing returns.  You might give yourself a maximum of spending 30 minutes a day doing email.  In XP development, there is a practice of a “40 Hour Work Week.”   if you’re a blogger, you might decide that you’ll spend no longer than 20 minutes writing your best material and sharing your best insights … anything after that sloughs off!

This means brutally focusing on spending more time on what you value, and letting the rest go.  You might thing of it as either “fierce focus” or “driving with clarity.”  Remember that you “get what you focus on” so spend more time on what you want, not what you don’t 

Examples of Boundaries in Time and QuantityBoundaries in terms of time and quantity will help keep your sanity and help you surf your way through producing great results.  When I first joined Microsoft, one of my colleagues said that their boundary is “dinner on the table at 5:30” and that’s how they achieved work-life balance.  When I later joined another group in Microsoft, a colleague told me that their boundary is they “take weekends off.”  They’ll work their fingers to the bone all week, but when the weekend comes it’s their time to recharge.  When I worked at Tiffany & Company, one of our director’s had an interesting boundary – Tuesday nights is date night with his wife.  Another one of the manager’s at Tiffany & Company had an interesting buffer he used – “Don’t spend $20 on a $5 problem.”  In other words, if the problem is only worth 10 minutes of your time, don’t spend more than that.  For me, using The Rule of 3 to take away three actionable insights from all the books I go through has both save me a lot of time, and generated a lot of value.

Additional Considerations for Letting Go with Skill
Here are some additional points to ponder that will help you let things go with skill:

• Time Changes What’s Important.  “To Do” lists get stale.  Backlogs get stale.  Laundry lists get stale.  Everything gets stale.  You can spend all your time re-arranging stale things, or you can spend just enough time bubbling up what’s important and taking action on it.
• Fresh Starts.  By creating new “To Do” lists each day and each week instead of one massive one, you give yourself a fresh start.  You carry the most important things forward.
• Travel light. Don’t be a beast of burden.  If you bite off what you can chew, you can actually get it done.  This helps you travel light each day and each week.  Rather than start off with an over-loaded pack of things you may never need, you start off with a simple vision and stories of your most important results.
• Spend more time doing over “paper shuffling” One of the worst things you can do is continuously reshuffle the things you have to do instead of just do them.   For all the things that you keep reshuffling but not actually doing, admit it.  Put them into a “parking lot” or “shelve” them for a later point when you will actually work on them.  Don’t keep them in your face, and don’t let them get in the way of your results.  Most of all, don’t die the “death of a thousand paper cuts.”  (If you’ve never heard this term before, paper shuffling is one way to die the death of a thousand paper cuts.”)
• Value Delivered Over Backlog Burndown.  Rather than simply burn through your laundry lists of tasks, do the quick reality check and ask whether the task is still important.  More importantly, step back and ask the simple question, if you completed it, “Does it matter?”   Does it connect back to the outcomes that you care about now or in the future, or was it simply a good idea that’s now past it’s prime or past it’s time?  In other words, don’t look at your big task lists or backlogs as what drives you.  They are simply input.  Draw from them, but focus on delivering value, not simply blind execution of things that were important at some point, but now are no longer, “your next best thing to do.”
• It’s a mindset thing. A large part of letting things go with skill is about shifting your mindset.  It’s about thinking in terms of value delivered over backlog burndown.  it’s about asking questions like, “What’s the next best thing for me to do?” or “What do I want to accomplish>?”  It’s about focusing on value and your wins and what you got done, over focusing on what you didn’t get done.

Today’s Assignment

1. Write down three outcomes for today.  This is re-enforcing our daily outcomes AND practicing letting things slough off with skill.
2. Write down your three outcomes for the week.  Consider the remaining time and energy you have for the rest of the week, where can you get the most bang for the buck?   What would three wins for the week look like?
3. Set one simple limit on something that’s been wearing you down.  Set either a time limit or a quantity limit.

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“Make each day your masterpiece.” — John Wooden

Your Outcome: Take control of your day by connecting your activities to what you value and what inspires you.  Turn even the most mundane activities into meaningful opportunities.

Welcome to day 3 of 30 Days of Getting Results.  In day 2, we looked at using three stories to drive your week.  Today we take a look at using three stories to drive your day.  I call this practice Daily Outcomes and it’s from my book, Getting Results the Agile Way.

Daily Outcomes is a way to use three stories to drive your day.  Before you start your day, simply identify the three results or outcomes you want to accomplish for the day, and work backwards from that.  An outcome can be anything from, “I had a great lunch,” to “I enjoyed my day,” to “I kicked arse in my presentation.”  What’s important is that you’re jumping ahead to the end result.  I like to think of this practice as taking a fewmindful minutes to avoid going on a mindless march.

3 Steps for Great Daily OutcomesHere are three steps you can use to create your three compelling stories to drive your day:

• Step 1. Identify your three key outcomes.  You choose what your three key results are. For example, maybe your three most important outcomes are: “I mowed the lawn, I completed my project plan, and I had a great lunch.”  If you’re feeling really off, maybe your three outcomes are, “I enjoyed my breakfast, I enjoyed my lunch, and I enjoyed my dinner.”
• Step 2. Turn your three outcomes into one-liner stories.  Stories help you add an emotional connection to your tasks.  You can even be the hero (“Today, I conquered the mess in the laundry room.”)
• Step 3. Connect your stories to your values. You can connect your stories to things you value.  For example, maybe you don’t like to rake the leaves, but you like to do your part “to help.”  Maybe you don’t like doing spreadsheets, but you like “to improve.”  Maybe you like “adventure.”  Maybe you like “achievement.”  To build on the previous example, “Today I conquered the laundry room with skill” which is a contrast to slogging my way through to victory.  One of the things I like to do each day is “master my craft.”  Get creative.  Find the play in your day.

The real beauty of Daily Outcomes is that you can wake up any day and simply ask yourself, “What are the three things I really want to accomplish today?”  That’s it.

Make Your “To Do” List More MeaningfulBut what if you have way more than three things to do for the day?   Simply add your three outcomes to the top.

The three outcomes will guide all the rest of your tasks.  These three outcomes are your “tests for success” for the day.  It’s your personal way of setting yourself up for success each day.

Be the Architect, the Author, or the Director of Your LifeDesigning each day empowers you to make things happen with skill.  You can be the architect of your day or the author of your life, a story at a time, and a day at a time:

• You get to be the architect of your life.  Design stories that empower and inspire you for action.
• You get to be the author of your life.  Write your story forward and connect to your emotions.
• You get to be the director of your life.  You choose where to point your camera and what to focus on.

Always remember that you are the most important meaning maker in your life.

Your Assignment

1. Identify the three results you want for today.
2. Turn each result into a simple story that connects to your passion and values.

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