It was an intense, busier-than-usual week for me.
And taking the time to reflect on it is the only way I make sure I actually learn from it and get better, turning chaos into structure and ability to handle more.
I reflect so I can see:
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what worked really well and why — so I can keep it, do more of it, and reuse it in other parts of my life
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what didn’t work — where I, or the world, “failed” my expectations, so I can redesign systems, adjust my mindset or my decision-making process
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why I planned too much and did less
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why certain things took priority over what I intended to do
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how, even on the busiest day, I still supported my health
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how I followed up on commitments or communicated adjustments
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what helped me prioritize according to my values, not someone else’s urgency or my own moods
Without this kind of reflection, you and I just run in circles.
We hope that next time we’ll do better.
That next time we’ll be different.
And almost always, we’re not.
There are 2 main reasons why. Something I was reminded of while reading Permanence: Become the Person You Want to Be and Stay That Way by Lisa Broderick, who we'll have on Change Wired podcast soon.
First: planner–doer bias.
Your planning self assumes your doing self will feel exactly the same way, being in the exact same favorable situation to do the right thing.
Motivated.
Clear.
With time, energy, resources, and perfect recall of why this mattered.
That’s rarely true, isn't it?
Second: distractions and wrong triggers.
In the moment of action, your attention gets hijacked.
By circumstances.
By other people’s needs.
By Slack, social media, meetings, moods, and noise.
You get pulled away from what you value, and triggered into behaviors your best self would never choose.
The solution to both isn’t more willpower. Or a different self.
It’s better systems.
What works, both in coaching others and coaching yourself, is asking a different kind of question:
“How can I design my environment, my routines and rituals, my decision-making process, my reminders, my accountability, my fridge, so that the next time, the same me can succeed?”
Look at what went right.
What allowed you to succeed despite all odds?
That’s not luck.
That’s a system, whether intentional or accidental.
Learn from it.
Reuse it for the days, situations and moments when things go wrong.
Then look at what didn’t work.
Not to judge yourself but to feed-forward:
What can I put in place so I remember to do the right thing?
So energy, motivation, and accountability make the right action easier?
So my environment supports my better self, not the self I’m trying to outgrow?
And very often, as I was reminded in Permanence, all that’s needed to follow through is learning to consistently ask the right question at the right time:
“Did I do my best to set myself up to do the right thing?
Over to you, dear reader,
What if every morning this question popped up on your phone with your alarm, or looked at you from your home screen, or landed in your inbox, so you could honestly assess whether you did everything you could to help yourself win today?
PS "Did I do my best...?" - is the way to ask active questions to put focus on your efforts, not circumstances. This is the main tool of change from the book Permanence that helped hundreds of executives to evolve into better selves and stay that way.
