Win The Day

I've tried a number of different methods to increase my productivity and advance both my personal and professional life; However, the one that's worked most effectively for me is Andy Frisella's Power List. The concept is pretty simple - You'll get to your destination by maintaining discipline and accumulating small wins over a given period of time.

Overview

With the power list, you have five essential tasks that must be completed every day. If you complete all tasks, you "win the day". Win enough days, win the week. Win enough weeks, win the year. Win enough years, win your life. If you want to hear about all of the details, I recommend listening to the podcast.

I've used the power list to help build habits as well as staying on track to meet my larger goals. Some examples of items on my list include

• Completing a ruck
• Reading 10 pages
• Spend 60 minutes on a programming project
• Drink 1 gallon of water
• Various tasks to build my business

One thing I really like, is that by doing this every day, it helps build awareness of when you're starting to fall behind or get off track. Not only are you forced to mark the day as a loss, but you can go back and see how often you're winning or losing. Losing a day here or there is expected, but if you're losing 3, 4, 5 days in a row, it becomes obvious immediately and you're able to course correct.

Keeping Track

Using the Power List isn't complicated, and nothing special is needed aside from something to write your daily tasks on. My first time doing this, I decided to purchase the actual "Power List" book from Andy. It's a hard back book and has a page for every day to track your tasks, what you're reading, and any notes. After filling up the book however, I opted to use some basic notebooks that I already had and just add the date with 5 numbered lines for my tasks with a check mark at the end once I've completed them.

I've thought about building an app for this to have something digital, but have since opted to use Standard Notes and see how it goes. I have a folder called "Power List" with a starred note that I use as a template. Every day, I create a new note for the day and paste my template to get started.

Standard Notes Template

If you'd like to try it, here's the template I'm using:

Outcome:

• [ ] Win
• [ ] Loss

Currently Reading:

• [ ]

Essential Tasks:

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Notes: