While wandering through the Current Events section of my local Barnes and Noble, I noticed a book by Mike Huckabee entitled Character Makes a Difference. Since I enjoy books that discuss the importance of character and integrity, I bought it and recently finished reading it.
While Mike’s discussion of the importance of character is very good, what I most enjoyed about the book was a reminder of some other important life management principles:
- Effective goal setting
- Learning from your mistakes
- Asking yourself the right questions
Mike mentioned that he is a prolific list-maker, something he learned from a mentor in school who helped him to spend thirty minutes at the start of each day
- Setting goals for the current day
- Reviewing how well he did with yesterday’s goals, and what could be learned from those he did not meet
It struck me that many of us probably leave out the important step of reviewing the previous day and learning what we can from it. I know it has been a long while since I have really done this.
It also occurred to me that the popular way to manage one’s day is to start it off by asking “What should I Do today?” While that is certainly better than just jumping into your email and your physical inbox, I think the better question is “What should I Accomplish today?”
The latter question is a lot more focused on ensuring we achieve the right results, and not just that we stay busy. We’ve touched on this topic before with Are You Asking the Right Questions? and Valuable Questions to Ask Yourself. Seems to me that it is worth bringing this point back to the surface again.