You made a list for THAT?

How early is too early to be accountable to your own self?

This is a question I asked myself after having dinner with friends. One of their children had made a "checklist" for ... well, you can see a picture of it here:

In more and more of the coaching I am doing, clients are grappling with the topic of "saying I'll do something, and then doing what I said."

Do you know how there are some days when you get to the end and, although you're relieved it's over, you realize you'd forgotten (or just plain didn't have time) to do something? It could be big OR small, it's interesting that it really doesn't matter...occasionally, you think of that thing and experience just a little bit of "stress."

I've not done a LOT of research into this, I mean if you finish a workday and completed a project, handled a meeting, satisfied a customer...then remember you forgot to stop at the store and buy cream for coffee the next morning...why does that stay on our mind?

I'm sure there is someone reading this who could explain it to me, but this post is about something else. It's about how to end those days thinking and feeling like it was worth it. Consider a 5-day experiment:

For 5 straight days, before you go to bed (or leave the office) write down a list of 6-10 things you completed that day. Who did you talk to? What project did you finish? What meeting did you handle? What else?

Be ending the day with a "post-mortem" checklist, you might consider using more checklists the next week. This is one of those tools that we often don't want to admit we need, but they sure come in handy! Just ask the kids at my friends' house...they say they never "forget to have fun" during a sleepover, 'cause they have a checklist of what they know they enjoy doing!