Six Engaging Questions to Measure the Quality of Your Day

How many times do you find yourself just going through the motions of your day? Then the next day. Then the next week. Month.

I do not like looking back at a day or especially a week and try to remember what happened. Why? Because the day just happened. I wasn’t really there and definitely not engaged.

But what if we could measure the quality of your day? Could it break the cycle of going through the motions and even better, help me be more engaged in my day?

I just finished a great read called Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts, Becoming The Person You Want To Be by Marshall Goldsmith.

The book is packed with useful information and was a good audiobook for me to listen to during exercise every morning for 30 minutes. I knocked out the book in 10 days.

The author coaches executives and has found when his motivated, busy professionals implement six engaging questions, they were far more conscious of their productivity and calling their day a true success because the quality of their day dramatically increased.

He made one seemingly minor change to the front of his questions from “Do I” to the words “Did I” and specifically to “do my best.” This changed everything.

Here Are Six Engaging Questions to Measure the Quality of Your Day

Q1- Did I Do My Best to Set Clear Goals?

Since a majority of people just go through their day, having clear objectives is key for productivity. Did we provide clarity in the direction of the day by setting clear goals?

If the day started with clear goals, the quality of the day almost always ends positively.

Q2- Did I Do My Best to Make Progress Toward My Goals?

Teresa Amabile in her book called The Progress Principle did research that has shown that employees who have a sense of “making progress” are more engaged than those who don’t.

Marshall Goldsmith responded, “We don’t just need specific targets; we need to see ourselves nearing, not receding from, the target.”

The quality of our day increases if we see we’ve made progress in whatever we worked on within our day.

Q3- Did I Do My Best to Find Meaning?

We want to be part of something bigger. And even if our job is not saving the world in some way, we desire to be doing something meaningful.

We can even find meaning in something else we do within our day but we long for meaning and purpose within our day.

But we need to ask the question. The natural route is to simply go through our day and do our deal. It’s not looking for meaning. This question will challenge this pull towards meaning and not coasting through life.

Q4- Did I Do My Best to Be Happy?

If our work is meaningful but we’re unhappy, we feel like martyrs and have little desire to stay in such an environment, Marshall Goldsmith continued.

According to Daniel Gilbert in Stumbling on Happiness, we’re lousy at predicting what will make us happy. We always assume the source of happiness is “out there” in other things.

Only when we take responsibility for our own happiness and quit waiting for someone or something to to bring us this joy do we find happiness on our own.

Why not strive to be happy within our day? What a difference it would make not only for us but for our co-workers and family!

Q5- Did I Do My Best to Build Positive Relationships?

The Gallup company asked employees “do you have a best friend at work?” They found the answers directly related to engagement.

If we’re active in relationships, we will be more engaged in what we do and ultimately be more fulfilled within our day.

This question is pro-active. We must build these relationships and people will ultimately add to the quality of our day.

Q6- Did I Do My Best to Be Fully Engaged?

This is on us and only us. No one can control our level of engagement within our day.

As Marshal Goldsmith added, “It’s a self-fulfilling dynamic: the act of measuring our engagement elevates our commitment to being engaged and reminds us that we’re personally responsible for our own engagement.”

Shouldn’t this be a major goal to be engaged in everything that happens within my day? I don’t want my day completely filled with people and things that I don’t want to be part of my day. I want to be alive and engaged to maximize the quality of my day.

Closing Challenge…

After 2500 participants used these daily questions for ten consecutive days, the results were incredibly positive:

37% participants reported improvement in all six areas
65% improved on at least four areas
89% improved on at least one area

Just after a short amount of time, people improved in the areas in which they reflect and measure. So can you.

Are you doing your best within your day? I don’t mean looking at others but for you. Did you do “your best?”

These questions do not require a lot of time at all but can produce exponential results for the time invested.

What if you looked back at your day and began to measure the quality by reflecting on “if you did your best” in these key areas then made the necessary adjustments the following day?

Imagine where you could be in a week, a month, or year to meet your potential!

Closing Question…

Are you willing to improve the quality of your day by asking these or a variation of these questions each day?