Make the Days Count
Don’t wait for year end to check your goal progress
One of my favorite podcasts is The Productive Woman. The host, Laura McClellan, shares tactics and strategies to manage the aspects of a full life — the “time, life, stress and stuff” as she says. And on her interview episodes, she asks her guest, “Do you ever have a day that just gets away from you, and if so how do you get back on track?”
My inner dialog chats back at the speaker. “A day? I had a decade and more where life went off the rails, after my solution to stress and dissatisfaction— margaritas, wine, whiskey — turned into its own problem.”
Most guests respond with answers along the lines of paring down their expectations for the day and making the best of it. Some look for an assistant to delegate critical items to or rebook appointments. But the key is, these guests knew their plans, had a track with defined objectives, and recognized when they were veering off course.
That awareness of a plan isn’t a given, though many of us maintain calendar obligations and to-do items for the day, week, month. And yet… how often have you caught yourself doomscrolling through social or mindlessly reading email or Slack messages when that wasn’t on the plan for a particular hour? And how often does that time bring you closer to your intended goals and…
