Chapter 6 - Design Your Day

From Getting Results | The Book

It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential. —Bruce Lee

In This Chapter

Learn how to set yourself up for success each day using “tests for success.”
Learn how to structure your day to maximize your results.
Learn how to chunk your day to avoid being overwhelmed.

Is your day by design or by default? One of the simplest ways to improve your day is to use The Rule of 3 to identify three results you want for the day. When you know what you want to accomplish, you can work backwards from that. Another way to improve your day is to add more power hours. It’s not how much time you have; it’s how you spend it. You can choose to spend your power hours having fun, blasting through obstacles, or achieving important results in your life. If you think of your day as a fixed budget of time, you can carve out time for what’s important. For example, have you made time for free time? Have you made time to invest in the important Hot Spots in your life (mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships, and fun)? The secret of a successful day is enjoying your startup routine, spending your time on compelling outcomes, enjoying the process, making time for what’s important (including free time), and ending your day in a way that supports you.

Each day is a fresh start. Remember as a kid waking up each morning to a new and exciting day? That’s the point you need to start from. The difference is now you have skills. You also picked up some good habits and some bad habits. You looked forward to growing up so you could do whatever you want. Unfortunately over time, maybe you started to think that life isn’t as full of possibilities or as limitless as you once thought. But what’s limiting you? You are, and all the limits you bring to each new day. Baggage brings you down. Don’t pick up your bags today. Travel light. Test yourself. Test your limits. Chances are you’ll surprise yourself time and again; just give yourself a chance. If things don’t work out today, then you can still walk away with lessons that will help you shape a better tomorrow.

Given that we spend our lives one day at a time, the real difference in our lives is how we spend each day. We’re creatures of habit, and it’s easy to fall into habits or routines that limit us. While you won’t get more time each day, you can choose how you spend it. You can think about your day in terms of activities. Or, you can think about your day in terms of events or highlights. You can also use outcomes or results as a gauge for your day. It really boils down to what you spend your time on, the quality of how you spend it, and who you spend your time with.

Designing Your Day

You can structure your day for success. The following table summarizes how to map out your day using key practices:

Table 6.1 Designing Your Day

Item	Key Practices
Start Your Day	Start with The Rule of 3 Startup Routine
Design Your Day	Scan Your Hot Spots Compelling Outcomes Scenario-Driven Results Carve Out Time for What’s Important Set Boundaries and Limits
Drive Your Day	Wear the Right Hat Worst Things First Pace Yourself Power Hours Test Your Results
End Your Workday	Dump Your State Hang Your Hat Up
End Your Day	4 Questions to Cap Your Day Shutdown Routine

Now, we’ll walk through these key practices so that you know what to do for each one.

Start Your Day

A good startup routine helps set the pace for the rest of your day. If you wake up and want to immediately crawl back to bed, that’s not an effective start. It’s not, however, necessarily about starting your day bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with sunshine, blue skies, and a bluebird on your shoulder. It’s about starting the day on your terms in a way that empowers you to be your best.

Start with The Rule of 3

If you remember nothing else, start your day with The Rule of 3. Know the minimum you want for the day—simply identify three results. These are your “tests for success.” It’s your chance to define your success, and you get a clean slate each day.

Here are some of the main reasons to start your day with The Rule of 3:

You define the three tests for success. If you set the rules, you win the game.
You get to define what good looks like.
You get to chart your course. If you start by quickly looking over the time you'll spend for the day, then you have a map to guide you through your day and to lead you if you get lost in the thick of things.
If you know what you're trying to accomplish, you can prioritize more effectively. There are a lot of little mini-decisions during your day that you can influence by knowing where you want to go.
If you know you're working on the right things, it's easier to give your all—to find your motivation.
When you map your day, you know how to pace yourself. You can’t run ahead if you can't see what's in front of you.

Remember that your three outcomes aren’t tasks. You might have lots of tasks that roll up to these three outcomes, but these are three results you want for the day. For example, for today I want a draft of my chapter complete, a fun lunch, and a strawman of my project plan. Those are the lines I’ve drawn in the sand for the day.

Startup Routine

This is how you bootstrap your day. You already have a startup routine. It’s the activities you do to start your day and feel grounded. For example, on weekdays, my startup routine is to wake up, workout for 30 minutes, shower, eat breakfast slowly, and take the back way to work. On my drive to work, I listen to my favorite music, and I think of my three most compelling outcomes for the day. When I get to work, I scan my inbox, my queues, and my calendar to see if I need to adjust my three outcomes.

Design Your Day

Designing your day is a simple exercise in creating enough scaffolding for your day. It helps you keep track of your day so it doesn’t get away from you. It also reminds you of what’s important and steers you clear from spending time on things that don’t move you closer to where you want to be. Designing your day is as easy as deciding three outcomes you want and then spending the day thinking, feeling, and doing whatever it takes to accomplish that. If you accomplish your three outcomes, you can always bite off more. You can also adjust your three outcomes if you find they just aren’t the right things for right now. What’s important is that you first explicitly define what you want to accomplish.

Scan Your Hot Spots

Think of your Hot Spots as a heat map of what’s important. At a high level, you have a stable set of Hot Spots for life: mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships, and fun. By investing in these areas throughout your life, you set yourself up for success. You also have Hot Spots for work, such as your active projects and any important roles or activities or events. You also have Hot Spots for your personal projects and roles, whether that’s fixing up your house, going on an adventure, or being a parent.

You should have a map of your Hot Spots in easy view, whether you write them on paper or store them electronically. The point is this—at a glance, you can quickly see all the balls you are juggling, and you can use the Hot Spots as a way to cherry-pick what the most important value is that you can deliver (whether to yourself or to others). It boils down to reducing pain and increasing pleasure. Some of your Hot Spots will represent opportunities in your life, while other Hot Spots will represent the leaks in your life that you need to fix. While it’s easy to get in the habit of only working on the most painful Hot Spots, stop and think whether you need to start investing more of your time and energy in Hot Spots that really change your game and open new doors. Don’t get stuck simply treading water and reducing pain. Strike a balance. Carve out a chunk of your life force for working on improvements and leading the life you want to live.

Compelling Outcomes

Turn your heat map into compelling outcomes. If Hot Spots are the areas that need your time and energy, outcomes are the results you want. After you scan your Hot Spots, boil them down into a set of results or outcomes you would like to see. Keep it simple. It’s counter-productive to make a laundry list of results you want. This is about distilling a few good enough results for now that you can reasonably make progress on. One way to figure this out is to identify what results you want for the week. If you know what you want for the week, then you can back it up from there to determine the results you need for today to get closer to where you want to be. If that’s not big picture enough, then think about the three results you want for the month, or even the year. The point is to make it compelling. If you have a compelling “Why,” you’ll find a way.

No matter what task or activity you work on, you can also identify compelling outcomes. It’s one thing to work on a task. It’s another to know what the outcomes are and what good looks like. You can identify tests for success that inspire you along the way. If this is a task you’re doing for yourself, you can identify your own tests for success. If this is a task you’re doing for somebody else, why not ask them what good looks like? Involve them. This way you don’t get surprised when you finish and they aren’t impressed. You can help reduce crossed expectations.

Scenario-Driven Results

Walk the scenarios. This is a way to test what good might look like. For example, rather than a laundry list of tasks (such as mow the lawn, clear the bushes, rake the leaves, etc.), turn it into a scenario, such as “enjoy the yard.” Then you can evaluate whether mowing the lawn is the next best thing to do. Perhaps the lawn is OK for now, but if you trimmed the tree so that you can use the hammock … now, that would really make it a great experience. Simply by visualizing the scenario or the experience you want, you get an idea of what you’re working towards. It’s a quick and simple exercise that helps you find your way through the laundry list of chores. It’s also the same technique that helps you find compelling outcomes. Simply by turning all your activities into compelling outcomes and using scenarios and experiences to test the end in mind, you dramatically improve your ability to get results.

Carve Out Time for What’s Important

You don’t have time, you make time. If you don’t make time for what’s important, it doesn’t happen. This is where The Rule of 3 helps. Are you spending the right amount of time today on those three results you want to accomplish? The default pattern is to try and fit them in with all your existing routines. A more powerful approach is to make time for your three results today and optimize around that. This might mean disrupting other habits and routines you have, but this is a good thing. The more you get in the habit of making time for what’s important, the more you’ll get great results. If you’re not getting the results you want, you can start asking better questions. For example, are you investing enough time? Are you investing the right energy? Are you using the right approach? Or, maybe a different thing happens. Maybe you start accomplishing your results but don’t like what you get. You can step back and ask whether you’re choosing the right outcomes for The Rule of 3.

Here are some things to think about when you’re carving out your time:

How much time minimum should you spend today for each of your three outcomes?
How much time maximum should you spend today for each of your three outcomes?
Are you spending too much energy in below the line activities? (This is where you’re just treading water and making it through each day, but not actually getting ahead.)
Are you spending enough time in above the line activities? (This is where you feel you’re on top of your day and investing your time where you get the most impact.)
Are you investing time in the most important Hot Spots in your life: mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships, fun?

Set Boundaries and Limits

Chunking up your day is easier if you use timeboxes and set boundaries. You can set boundaries at a high level. For example, you might decide that breakfast is at 8:00 a.m., lunch is at 12:00 noon, and dinner is at 5:30 p.m. In addition, you might decide that your workout is from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. and that nothing gets in the way. Lastly, you might also decide that you’ll take “weekends off” but work intensely during the week. What’s important is that you do this by design and not by default. If you just do the default it can be easy to spend all your time in the wrong places or spend too much time in one area at the expense of another.

One of the most important things you can do is to fix time for eating, sleeping and working out. If you fix time for these three things and then work your day around these, you help set yourself up for success. Think of these as part of your personal success patterns and fine tune them. For example, look back through your life and decide, what was the most effective approach you had for working out? What were your best routines for eating and sleeping? If you don’t have routines that work, now you know to prioritize and figure them out.

You can also set up boundaries and limits for accomplishing your three outcomes for the day. Decide on the minimum and maximum time you want to allocate for each. It’s answering the question, “What’s the range of time and energy you want to spend to make it happen?” This helps you avoid over-investing or even under-investing. It’s also easy to underestimate the amount of work involved. If each day what you estimate to take three hours takes you six hours instead, then you need to pay attention. This is your chance to start practicing how you estimate your time. You’ll get better with practice.

Drive Your Day

Drive or be driven. It’s easy to spend your day reacting, especially if you don’t have a plan. Once you have a plan, you at least have a rough map for your day. You still need to be flexible, but at least you’ve charted a potential course. Now that you have a map, it’s easy to decide on things such as whether you can take a leisurely stroll or whether you need to get it in gear and really kick some arse. Driving your day is the thinking, feeling, and doing part. It’s the execution of your results. If you start your day with three outcomes you want to accomplish, then you can drive your day. If you’re not driving, you’re reacting.

Wear the Right Hat

Adopt the right mindset for the situation. Using a hat as a metaphor, you can wear different hats for different situations. For example, maybe you need a more exploratory mindset, so you put on your explorer’s cap. Maybe you need to kick some arse and take names; that’s another hat. Either way, this is about recognizing that your mindset will be the biggest influence on how you approach your day and how you react to it. Switch out hats that aren’t working. Have a set of hats you can trust and wear the right hat for the job.

Worst Things First

This is a practice I learned long ago—doing worst things first. It’s human nature to move away from pain. But rather than save your biggest hurdle for the end, do it up front when you are your strongest. The idea is to “get it over with.” For instance, sometimes I have a meeting or a conversation or even just a task for the day that I’m not looking forward to. I’m not talking about the stuff I can ignore forever. I’m talking about the stuff that needs to happen sooner rather than later, but that I won’t enjoy doing. Whenever possible, I try to schedule these hurdles for the earlier part of my day or week when I’m at my strongest. Don’t let things loom over you. If you push those things to the end of the day or the end of the week, they loom. Why loom longer than necessary? That’s draining. One of my mentors gave me this tip, worst things first, and it has become one of my most effective habits.

Power Hours

Having power hours is your best asset for the day. A power hour is when you feel at your strongest and in the zone. You accomplish more in that one power hour than you do spending several hours or even days not in the zone.

If you don’t have a single power hour in your day (or just don’t know when it is), then it’s job one to find it. Look back on your day and your week to answer these questions:

Are there times that you seem to get a whole lot done no matter what the task?
Do you find you concentrate better at certain times of the day?
When do you feel like a fully fueled race car rather than a broken-down jalopy?

At first, you might find yourself with only one or two power hours a day. As you pay attention to your power hours, you can start to find ways to have more power hours in your day. For example, if you find that just taking a quick, five minute walk gets the creative juices flowing again, then you’ve found a way to create a power hour on demand. You can spend your power hours on whatever you want. The key is to set yourself up to have power hours in the first place.

Pace Yourself

When you have a map of your results, it’s easier to set your pace. If you only have one speed, then you’re not enjoying the spectrum or cycles of your day. Rather than think of it as a marathon, think of the day as a series of sprints. When you take your breaks, really take your breaks. When you’re working, be fully engaged. Don’t spend all your time doing everything halfway. It’s not engaging, and you won’t find your flow. Give your best where you have your best to give and maximize your energy bursts. Make the most of them and set yourself up for more. Just like any muscle, your energy reserves get stronger as you flex them.

Test Your Results

Testing your results is one of the most important practices you can adopt. First, it’s thinking about how you can break your own limits and surprise yourself. Second, you want to test your assumptions about the work as early as possible and find any surprises. Really, this is about both exploring your limits and testing ideas against reality. The quicker you test your results, the quicker you get feedback to make better decisions as well as find any fallback plans if needed.

Rather than decide up front whether you can do this or you can’t do that or that’s impossible, start testing your results and inform your own opinion. It’s easy to let your past failures limit your future successes. But keep in mind that scenarios can make a big difference; so does your approach. If you’ve failed before, it may have very well been due to the scenario, the context, or your approach. In that case, learn what you can from the experience but don’t let it get in the way of your future results.

End Your Workday

When you end your workday, the last thing you want is for your wheels to keep spinning. Here are a few practices that you can use to help you transition from work.

Dump Your State

Some of the most effective people I know use this simple practice—they dump their state at the end of the day. They write down whatever they were working on so that they can easily pick up where they left off. Whether this is in a notebook or a text file, what’s important is that it’s in a place you trust.

Hang Your Hat Up

Just going home doesn’t cut it. You need a transition. You need to shift your mind from thoughts of work to thoughts of home. One practice some people use is to hang their hat up. They simply visualize a tree in front of their house, and they hang their hat up on that tree before they go inside. They can then pick their hat up the next day. Another approach you can use is to start asking yourself different questions that aren’t work-related, such as, “What would I like to do tonight for fun?” Changing the questions changes your focus.

End Your Day

How you end your day matters. Simply by adding certain routines, you can improve your day’s end and set yourself up for success. One routine is to ask yourself four questions to help put the focus on some of the most important aspects of your day. The other is to have an effective shutdown routine. Both routines help you wind down from your day.

4 Questions to Cap Your Day

At the end of each day, I ask myself the following:

What did I learn?
What did I improve?
What did I enjoy?
What kind act did I do?

I use these questions to reflect on daily improvements as well as course-correct. I also use them to appreciate life's little lessons each day. It's a simple practice, but it helps make sure I don't slip into life's auto-pilot mode. What's interesting too is that this simple practice can actually raise your happiness level by focusing on important aspects of your day in a positive light.

Shutdown Routine

This is how you end your day. Just like having an effective startup routine helps bootstrap your day, an effective shutdown routine helps you wind down. The key to an effective shutdown routine is testing different patterns until you find one that helps put you in the right frame of mind for a more restful sleep. Sleeping well is the means to starting the next day refreshed.

You might think it would be easy enough to think of a great shutdown routine, but there are a lot of variables. It’s actually better to test a variety of patterns to see what helps you the most, whether it’s watching TV, reading a book, meditating, etc. For example, if you tend to watch the news before you sleep, test watching a comedy; different shows will produce different results. If you like to read a book before bed, are you reading a book that helps you wind down, or are you reading material that makes it hard for you to fall asleep? Simply notice the results you’re getting and test different approaches.

There’s a lot of research and opinions, but the most important thing is to find what works for you. It’s less about the activity you do and more about how it impacts you or how you react to it. For example, if you watch a comedy where the main character always gets into a stressful situation, and you have a lot of empathy, maybe this is not the best thing for you before bed. Then again, maybe the happy ending is just the perfect tension and release you need for the perfect slumber. Test your results and change your approach if it’s not working. At the end of the day, you’re the most important judge.

Lastly, in addition to how you feel at the end of your day, it’s also important to notice how you feel when you wake up. If you’re not waking up refreshed, chances are that it’s what you did the night before that makes all the difference (barring any medical conditions, of course). So go ahead and find what works for you. Test some new patterns. Get creative. Explore your results.

Example of a Day by Design

Here’s an example of a day by design:

Table 6.2 Example of a Day by Design

Item	Examples
Outcomes	3 outcomes Finish my review (must/don’t want) Email to team for new path (should) Mock up a new design (should/want) To-dos Clear inbox Catch up with Jason Research effective user experience patterns Synch with Bob on the approach
Startup	7:00 – 8:30 a.m.—Workout, shower, and breakfast
Administration	9:00 – 9:30 a.m.—Clear mail, check calendar, and prioritize. 4:00 – 4:30 p.m.—Clear mail
Think Time	8:30 – 9:00 a.m.—Drive to work 9:30 – 10:00 a.m.
Power Hours	10:00 – 11:00 a.m. 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.
Breaks	12:00 – 1:00 p.m.—Lunch 2:00 – 2:30 p.m. 6:00 – 7:00 p.m.—Dinner
Play Time	5:00 – 6:00 p.m. 8:00 – 9:00 p.m.
Shutdown	10:00 p.m.—4 Questions to Cap Your Day 10:30 – 11:00 p.m.—Read 11:00 p.m.—Sleep

Additional Considerations

The following are some additional considerations for improving your day:

Action Before Motivation

Stop waiting for lightning to strike. Just start; don’t wait for inspiration to come. Can you imagine if athletes only trained when they were inspired? This will seem especially counter-intuitive if you’re the type that waits for inspiration. The truth, however, is that some days you will get inspiration, and other days you won’t. That’s the nature of the beast. The key though is that you raise your chances for inspiration by getting up to bat. In many cases, you’ll find that while you don’t start off inspired, once you take action, your motivation follows. For instance, you may have an exercise routine that you aren’t inspired to do, but once you’re doing it, you may find you actually enjoy it (or at the very least, find enough motivation to keep going). If you’re saying to yourself, “I don’t feel like doing it,” remind yourself that you might feel like doing it once you’re actually doing it.

Execution Checklists

Creating execution checklists is a simple, but effective technique for improving results. An execution checklist is not a to-do list. It’s a list of steps in sequence to perform a specific task. To create it, I simply write the main steps down before I start the task. This helps me plan the main steps while I’m in think-mode. Then, while I’m running through the steps, I don’t have to think too hard about what to do next or get lost in the steps. There are two main scenarios:

You are planning the work to be executed. In this case, you're thinking through what you have to get done. This is great when you feel over-burdened or if you have a mind-numbing, routine task that you need to get done. This can help you avoid task saturation and reduce silly mistakes while you're in execution mode.
You are paving a path through the execution. In this case, you're leaving a trail of what worked. This works great for tasks that you'll have to perform more than once or you have a routine you want to improve.

I encourage you to create execution checklists for any friction points or sticking spots you hit. For example, if there's a routine you have with lots of movable parts, capture the steps down and tune them over time as you gain proficiency. As simple as this sounds, it's very effective whether it's for a personal task, a team task, or any execution steps you want to improve.

Worry Breaks

In his book, Shed 10 Years in 10 Weeks, Dr. Julian Whitaker suggests taking a “worry break.” If you find yourself stressed with worry throughout the day, then consolidate it. Designate a half-hour break for worrying; it’s better than randomly entertaining these thoughts throughout the day. During your break, worry as much as you want and as intensely as you want. Let yourself think of all the worst-case scenarios. By having a designated time for this, you make it easier to stay focused during the rest of your day. When you start to worry, remind yourself that you made a specific time for it. The more you stick to using your worry breaks, the less distracted you’ll get throughout your day.

Another benefit of consolidating you worries into a worry break is that you give your troubles their own focus so that you can begin to address them and start to find more effective patterns. For example, you may find that some of your problems can be broken down into smaller problems and tackled as needed. While in other cases, seeing a group of problems together may lead you to discover a common solution. Then there are other worries that just needed a moment of your time, but now it’s time to let go.

Creative Hours

Creative hours are those times when your mind feels free to explore ideas: creating new ideas from scratch, putting new ideas together, or simply reflecting. They’re really a state of mind—a state of daydreaming. It’s the mindset that’s important. Whereas your power hours may be focused on results, your creative hours are focused on free-form thinking and exploration. You might find that creative hours are your perfect balance to power hours. You might also find that you thrive best when you add more creative hours to your week. Ultimately, you might find that your power hours free up time for your creative hours, or that your creative hours change the game and improve your power hours. Your power hours might also be how you leverage your ideas from your creative hours. Test your results.

Make It Work, Then Make It Right

This is a simple rule of thumb that can help you dramatically accomplish more. Rather than try to perfect things as you go along, try to complete things first. Then go back and improve them. If you try to improve as you go, you often won’t know when to stop. Worse, you won’t complete things. If you don’t complete things, all your improvements along the way are insignificant because you never get to the point where you or anybody else can enjoy them. On the other hand, if you bite off enough to complete a meaningful chunk and make it work, then you can show off what you’ve accomplished so far while deciding how “right” you want to make it. This builds momentum. Always find the simplest path through to get to a working result. Then go back and improve as needed. By having working results, you’ll build your confidence and momentum. More people fail by never finishing or by wallowing in perfectionism or analysis paralysis. Your chances are better by getting working results you can improve. Make it work, and then make it right.

Batch and Focus

Consolidate similar tasks and do them in a batch. This helps you reduce task switching and improve your efficiency. If you have to keep task switching, changing focus, and hopping around, you’ll break your rhythm and you won’t get the benefit of batching.

Test Drive Your Results

Get in the habit of doing dry runs. If you’re in the habit of thinking everything through in your head, shift to thinking less and doing more. You’ll find that there are many things you can’t anticipate. Instead, of focusing on anticipating, focus on learning and responding. Take action, learn, and respond. This will help keep you out of analysis paralysis. More importantly, you’ll produce more effective results. You’ll also find your surprises earlier versus later. Testing your results helps you very quickly find gaps, surprises, or dependencies so you can adapt as needed before you paint yourself into a corner.

Reduce Friction

Find ways to reduce friction. Friction can be anything from a sloppy desk to an over-complicated task you need to perform regularly. Friction adds up and can eventually provide enough resistance that you stop doing the activity entirely, often to your own detriment. Create glide paths so that you can more easily fall into the right habits and practices. For example, leave your sneakers by your bed so you can just get up and run first thing in the morning, or put your favorite music within easy reach of your workout. I routinely do a quick sweep of my desk before I start work. I spend no more than 10 minutes. Doing so allows me to carve out a nice clean space free of distractions, and I can get to work with nothing in my way.

Quantify It

Sometimes setting a quota is better than using a timebox. For example, can you think of three compelling goals for your year? Can you think of three results for today that you would enjoy working on? When you get stuck on something that seems large and overwhelming, then try chunking it down into smaller quantities. Start with a number you can easily hit and then add more. Can you do one push up? OK, now let’s go for three. The key is to think in terms of incremental hurdles. This will help you deal with problems that overwhelm you as well as with information overload. Eat an elephant a bite at a time.

In Summary

Structure you day for success. Begin by creating three compelling outcomes. Scan your Hot Spots.
Create a startup routine.
Create compelling outcomes.
Carve out time for what's important.
Create a shutdown routine.