How to WIN Your Day and Make Change Faster

Your environment is at war with you every day and it almost always takes you by surprise: Your child wakes up with a bad cold and can’t go to school; your plane is delayed; it starts pouring with rain; you have a client with an urgent need, or your partner has a bad day at work and not only needs to talk about it now but needs you to pick up dinner. In Marshall Goldsmith’s book, Triggers, he refers to such things as “the high predictability of low predictability events.”

It matters because these things can easily throw you off your well-intentioned goals for the day.

He notes that “We are superior planners and inferior doers” because of:

a)????Unpredictable events and how we respond to them

b)???We get depleted as the day wears on. Our self-control and self-discipline wane like the battery on a mobile phone.

Our failure to get what we want done has many negative effects: on our morale, on our behaviour, on our results, and on our capacity to change. That is a daunting list!

1.????Handle UNPREDICTABLE EVENTS well

a)????Pick your battles.

Goldsmith insists: “Our best behaviour is not random and is within our control” and one tool is to catch yourself before you react with what he has coined: AIWATT – a principle to reduce stress, conflict, debate and wasted time. Basically, you’re asking yourself: Should I engage or ‘let it go’? “It is a reminder that our environment tempts us many times a day to engage in pointless skirmishes – and we don’t have to take the bait.”

Am I willing

At this time,

To make the investment required

To make a positive difference

On this topic?

b)???Don’t take things personally.

We behave more calmly when we realise that other people’s behaviour is because of what’s going on with them, not us. There’s a great quote from Wayne Dyer on this:

“How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.” When other people set you off, remember that you only control how you behave.

Exercise: Picture someone who drives you crazy: How much sleep is that person losing over you tonight? Who is being punished here? Who is doing the punishing?

Don’t get mad at people for being who they are. Just accept them.

c)????Three Band-Aid solutions to immediate challenges:

i.?????Anticipate what might happen (before you go somewhere or plan something: e.g., if you’re trying to lose weight, meet somewhere you’ll be less tempted to self-sabotage)

ii.????Avoid some environments so as not to bring out your worst or tempt you to get off track (e.g., there’s a very busy four-way stop traffic intersection I avoid in my town because it brings out the worst in me, and I fear that one day I’ll get upset with a driver who turns out to be the parent of one of my children’s friends)

iii.??Adjustment in your environment (your flight is delayed and instead of getting angry, you say to yourself: “Now I have more time to read that book”)

2.????Handle DEPLETION well

a)???We need to plan our days differently as the day goes on because we need to manage ourselves differently as the day goes on. We start the day with two roles – part leader and part follower and they grow apart as the day goes one. We need more step-by-step direction later in the day.

STRUCTURE is how we overcome waning motivation, self-discipline, energy, and decision fatigue. “Structure provides help because we don’t have to make as many decisions; we just follow the plan.”

b)???We need to practice active recovery. Take more mini breaks during the day so your battery doesn’t run down too fast. Make the time to allow your body to recharge physically with a hot bath, sauna, massage, walk or stretching (not TV and alcohol). This is no longer a nice to have for the high achiever. Your body can only push so hard for so long and you become less productive.

c)????Evaluate your life once/month with these simple questions:

i.?????STOP: What do you need to STOP doing? It might be something you quite enjoy but it is keeping you at a plateau.

ii.????LESS: What do you need to do LESS of?

iii.??KEEP: What do you want to KEEP doing? Most people don’t practice this enough. Getting better at something is not always the best instinct (since something else will have to give). You are already doing plenty of things right.

iv.??MORE: What do you want to do MORE of?

v.????START: What do you want to START or create? What to add? What to invent? Do you need a better behaviour?

vi.??ACCEPT: What do you need to ACCEPT in your life? e.g. a medical diagnosis, praise, that reasonable people can disagree on a topic; that you were wrong; rejection; abundance; that it’s time to forgive someone

3.????Raise Your Self-Awareness Through Structured Daily Questions

This may not sound very exciting, but this is Goldsmith’s secret weapon with the Fortune 100 CEOs he coaches.

Goldsmith’s Daily Questions

All the questions start with: Did I do my best to…

Here are his standard six ‘foundation’ questions. You can come up with others that relate to the six monthly questions I suggested above.

On a scale of 1-10, did I do my best to…

1.????Set clear goals today?

2.????Make progress toward my goals today?

3.????Find meaning today?

4.????To be happy today?

5.????Build positive relationships today?

6.????Be fully engaged today?

Did I do my best to… injects personal responsibility and ownership into the questions.

It’s not easy “to face the reality of our own behaviour – and our own effort level – every day.” Especially when we have told ourselves it is something important. So, either we push ourselves into action or we abandon the question.

Goldsmith adds that 90% of people rate themselves as above average, yet within 2 weeks 50% will give up on Daily Questions. I lasted 6-8 weeks the first time I tried them in 2015. I made three mistakes.

1.????I didn't personalise the questions enough so at some point allowed my negative self-talk to convince me that these were (somehow) Goldsmith’s priorities, not mine. I took his recipe too literally.

2.????I lacked the worthiness to see that the best of the best commit to these questions to get even better and that, somehow, I didn’t fully deserve to play with this crowd. It was okay for me to have a ‘kick around’ but not actually be on the field for the big game.

3.????This was the big one that I quickly convinced myself I didn’t need to do, and you may too:

“The only essential element is that the scores are reported somehow – phone, email or a voicemail – to someone every day. And that someone is the coach.”

Reading off our scores becomes a test of our commitments. That ‘coach’ can be one of three things:

-??????Simply a scorekeeper who makes no judgement (says nothing)

-??????A referee blowing the whistle if your scores are repeatedly low

-??????A full-blown advisor who asks you about what we’re doing and why

It’s quite easy to see why we wouldn’t want this level of accountability. It’s confronting and forces us to step up and be counted. I feel sad that my past self didn’t have the internal strength or resolve to do this. I guess I had too many other challenges at the time or perhaps had not built up enough support.

Goldsmith adds that one reason we resist coaching is a need for privacy. It’s hard to face we are lacking at home as parents or partners.

Another reason is that we don’t know we need to change: denial, or convincing ourselves that others need help, not us.

Unshakeable self-sufficiency: we think can do it all on our own, but we are all weak at times. “The process of change is hard enough without grabbing all the help we can get”

Three benefits of daily questions:

1.????If we do it, we get better

2.????We get better faster

3.????Eventually we become our own Coach

The Daily Questions provide the structure and accountability to keep top of mind your biggest priorities. I simply cannot think of a better way to help you make change.

If you understand how to create tiny habits (see BJ Fogg) and implement your own daily questions, and are still failing to make change in your life when you tell yourself you want it, then:

a)????You don’t really want to change

b)???You don’t think you deserve to get the better outcomes (worthiness barrier)

c)????You’re fooling yourself into thinking you’ll do it yourself – this is a tricky one because often you’re right AT FIRST. Often, we do take some initial action but, rather like New Year’s Resolutions, they almost never stick. So, please, find an accountability partner - however awkward it might feel to ask around. Remember, the other person doesn't have to respond.

Let me leave the final words on this topic with Marshall Goldsmith: “We have to go to the gym forever.”

None of this is easy, I know. But it’s the difference in your one life between fairly good and great. And a lot of this is within your control.

Seize it!

Matt

Copyright Matt Anderson, 2021

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