How I Consistently Live in Alignment With My Truest Priorities
The other day I was going through some old papers, and I found my stash of Daily Wins Checklists. (Pictured above.)
Made me smile seeing this FAT stack of papers.
You see, I’ve been using Daily Wins Checklists (DWCs) since the beginning of 2017. (Right after I started writing here on Mindful Ambition.)
And I haven’t stopped using them because they’ve continuously helped me perform better.
The title of the original article says it all: The Daily Wins Checklist: An Accountability System for Your Most Important Priorities.
My DWCs help me stay accountable to living life in alignment with my most important priorities.
It’s Peter Drucker’s famous wisdom–“What gets measured gets managed.”–but applied to our lives, in a tremendously simple way.
I can’t recommend this practice highly enough.
If you haven’t checked out the article, now’s a great time to do so. But the practice is pretty simple.
- Get clear on the things you do when you have your best days.
- Make a week-long checklist with those behaviors on it.
- Use the checklist every day to remind yourself of what your priorities are, celebrate your wins as you go, and learn how you can improve.
And you can use it for literally anything. Just identify your goal, identify the behavior (or habit) that’ll help you move towards that goal, and make a checklist to track that behavior on a daily (or weekly) basis.
I’ve used it to improve my sleep by tracking I went to bed, when I woke up, how much sleep I got, when I shut down my electronics for the night, my Oura readiness score, etc.
I’ve used it to get in better shape by tracking the workouts I complete, and the number of steps I walk every day.
I’ve used it to dial-in my nutritional protocol by giving myself a grade (A, B, C, D, F) on the quality of the food I ate that day, and another for quantity (stopped eating when 100% full, 90% full, 80% full, etc.)
I’ve used it to stay devoted to my meditation practice, tracking how many minutes I meditate in the morning and in the evening.
I’ve used it to commit to doing my best work by tracking how many hours of deep work I complete each day.
I’ve used it to feel more connected with others by tracking how many meaningful conversations I had each week.
I’ve used it to learn more by tracking how many pages I read each day, how many Optimize +1s or PhilosophersNotes I read, or how many lessons in a course I completed.
Heck, when I was dating, I even used it to get more dates by tracking the amount of time I spent on dating apps connecting with prospective partners each day.
Moral of the story?
Well, life is short. We don’t know how much time we’ve got on this earth together.
So if we wanna live a life of no regrets, we’d better start (or continue!) living in alignment with our most important priorities while embodying the best versions of ourselves, day in and day out.
Which begs the questions…
1 – What are YOUR most important priorities in life?
2 – What habits help you live in alignment with those priorities?
3 – How would it feel if you spent your days just a bit more in alignment with what you care about most this week?
Bust out a piece of paper, make your own Daily Wins Checklist, and let’s do this.
Oh, and one more thing.
After this week is done? Make another one. And then another the next week.
Do that for dozens (and hundreds!) of weeks, and that’s how you fundamentally and permanently change your life.
Big hugs + high-fives,
Patrick