A daily review is an integral part of my overall ‘impact system’. It sits alongside other key parts of my system, including a weekly review, which I’ll cover in a separate post.
My daily review has two primary objectives:
- Increase my impact: I’ve learned over the years that the aim isn’t to be ‘productive’ and get lots of stuff done. Impact comes from getting the small number of really important things done.
- Reduce my mental load: I typically have a lot going on between my day job, family, hobbies, self-improvement and other projects. My system gets actions, ideas, appointments etc out of my head and captures them somewhere so I don’t have to remember them all.
My version of a daily review is something I’ve been using, tinkering with and refining over the better part of a decade now. It works well for me, so thought I’d share it. I still tinker with it from time to time, including recently modifying the review to work with a daily planning journal I’ve been road-testing.
Design
Here’s some important factors that have gone into designing my daily review:
- Lightweight: it needs to be simple and easy to maintain, and completed in 20min or less. I’ve tried so-called ‘productivity systems’ like Getting Things Done (GTD), but found them too difficult to keep up with. I want to get on with the important stuff, rather than spending all day reviewing and planning. My system was initially inspired by a ‘simplified’ version of GTD that you can read about here Practicing Simplified GTD (lifehacker.com).
- Flexible: it needs to work for whatever is going on in my life, and be easy to adjust if I have a particular short term focus (like a habit I’m focussed on). There will be days where I miss doing the review. I need to be able to pick back up without facing a pile of work to get my system back on track.
- Biased for action: I’m a procrastinator, and I’ve learned that (for me) motivation typically follows action, not the other way around. I use routines that get me ‘unstuck’ and off the starting line.
Tools
Here’s what I use for my daily review:
- my notebook and pen
- to-do list app (I personally use todoist, it’s great)
- email and calendar
- daily review template
How
Here’s how I do my daily review:
- Review:
- Did I complete my Most Important Thing and One Quick Win (more on these terms later)? If yes, is there an obvious related next step? If no, do I need to carry over to today?
- Process my email inbox for the previous day. I try not to get stuck responding to anything that isn’t more than a quick yes/no answer. Anything that requires work goes on my to-do list.
- Check my notebook for any actions (I mark these with an asterisk during the day so I can find them quickly while scanning) and add them to my to-do list.
- Check and update my to-do list, tick off things that are done and add anything missing/new.
- Plan:
- Check my calendar for today and tomorrow, and see if there is anything I need to do before upcoming meetings/appointments. Add these to my to-do list.
- Pick my Most Important Thing for the day, usually something off my to-do list. I prompt myself to remember that this should usually be something ‘small’, taking less than 1 hr to do. This is to force myself to be specific, and avoid just selecting a major project that I have no hope of completing in one day. If I need to work on a bigger project, I decide on a meaningful but achievable part to get done today.
- Book time into my calendar to do this Most Important Thing. I aim to make myself unavailable to anyone else until this thing is done. I’m pretty ruthless with this and schedule it early in the day if I can. I reschedule other appointments if need be. After the Most Important Thing is done, I’m happy to be more giving with my time.
- Pick my One Quick Win. This can be anything, as long as it is short, easy and I can do it right now without any pre-work. I usually aim to do this straight after my daily review to get myself moving.
- Identify any other things I’d like to get done today. I don’t hold myself particularly accountable to these, but it gives my day a bit of focus and prioritisation.
- Plan out my day in my calendar, blocking out time for other things I want to do (I’m usually pretty flexible with everything other than my MIT).
The template
We’ve developed a printable template for the daily review. Download your free copy of the Daily Review Template here.
