Ask yourself these five questions each day

Questions to ask

to kick-start your self-reflection journey with a daily check-in!

There is no real secret to developing habits, it takes time and commitment to yourself and/or your desired outcomes. You have probably heard that a habit takes 21 days to form, however, fun fact; that quote is actually a misquote!

A research study published in 2009 concluded that the “time it took participants to reach 95% of their asymptote of automaticity ranged from 18 to 254 days”: so in summary it can really differ from person to person and is largely influenced by a number of factors outside of the person such as the complexity of the behaviour and the likely outcomes of succeeding. The true average across the group was 66 days: so a little over 2 months.

This is why it’s often good to start small, the larger and more the change is, the less likely you are to ultimately succeed in your desire to build that habit so taking that into consideration and applying that to building personal or professional reflection habits, a great way to get started is to complete a daily check-in. You can use the below questions as a baseline and start to realise the benefits of personal or professional reflection!

How do I feel today?

Do not take too long to think about this question really; you could answer with a simple word or rate how you’re feeling on a scale from 1-10.

As you answer this question each day, try to develop a consistent approach to this self-measurement! Doing this will help you identify trends; allowing you to make the most of your peaks 📈 and better identify and implement corrective actions for your slumps! 📉

What was the best thing that happened to me today?

This could be anything that is significant to you. Personal achievement, professional development milestone, completing a pesky task that you have been procrastinating on for two weeks or even a hug from a loved one 💗

What is the most important thing I must accomplish tomorrow?

If you could only accomplish one thing tomorrow what is going to add the most value or be the biggest win for you and your team or family.

Deciding this in the evening is going to set you up to wake up and smash your objective for the day. No excuses, grab a coffee ☕ and get to it!

What is one thing that I can do to improve my day tomorrow?

Think about your actions and their outcomes; how productive & effective you were throughout the day, and set yourself a goal to implement a single corrective action to improve your output for tomorrow! 🎯

It need not be a groundbreaking, life-changing correction; it can be something as simple as taking time to relax and reflect one more time (something we would always advocate of course) or getting out of the house or office for a 10-minute walk. But of course, it could be something directly related to productivity such as using an internal tool more effectively.

Overall, how do you rate your day?

Similar to the first question, think quick and try to measure those metric consistently each day!

You will notice that the questions I’m proposing here do not require especially “deep thought and consideration”: although you can choose to apply them as such.

There are also significant benefits to keep a track of these answers throughout the week; so how do you do that?

Well, you could go ol’ school and record your answers in a journal next to your PC or bed. You could capture your answers on your phone or computer as a note or in Google Keep (or something similar), or you could (and we would highly recommend it of course): signup at My Reflections for a free account and use the “daily check-in” reflection type (as shown in the image to the left) that was added last month!

Once you have successfully developed your daily check-in habit, then you can make use of My Reflections to reflect on other aspects of your life.

That’s going to be it for today, but I hope you enjoyed this article. Never hesitate to message me on Instagram or Facebook if you would like to discuss how My Reflections can help you or social groups that you are involved with!