If you want to increase your productivity, efficiency, personal growth, and motivation there are 3 questions that will do exactly that. By taking the time to sit down and address them, you can drastically accelerate your progress on all your goals.
The 3 Questions That Will Lead to Massive Success
The 3 questions are: 1. What did you do today that moved you towards your goals? 2. What actions did you take today that prevented you from achieving your goals? 3. What new practices can accelerate your progress towards your goals? Before I jump into explaining how to use these specific questions I want to discuss why each one is powerful. Each question plays a very important and critical role.
What did you do today that moved you towards your goals?
You do things each week that move you towards your goals, and the more of these actions that you do, faster you will attain them. This question helps you identify those key behaviors, as you should aim to increase them.
What actions did you take today that prevented you from achieving your goals?
You are likely also doing things that prevent you from achieving your goals. These behaviors become the barrier between you and your target, and the quicker you eliminate these behaviors from your life, the faster you will achieve your goals. This question helps you identify the specific things you did that are preventing you from achieving your dreams.
What new practices can accelerate your progress towards your goals?
No matter where you are in your life, there is always room for improvement. The key is to identify new practices that will accelerate you towards your goals, and this question helps you identify new tactics that will increase the rate by which you achieve your objective.
How To Ask and Answer the 3 Key Questions
Knowing the questions is powerful, but that alone isn’t enough: you need to take the time to sit down and answer each of them honestly as well, as ideas and concepts lead to nothing without action. Below is a specific step-by-step process to get the most out of them.
Step 1: Identify one goal you want to focus on.
This is very important! Identify one specific goal you want to focus on—it can be anything but for now, so just choose one. Once you know your goal, move on to the next step.
Step 2: Set up a Weekly Meeting With Yourself.
Establish a time once per week where you will have a meeting with yourself. Never miss this meeting! During this meeting you will assess your progress on your goal using the three questions. Anytime is fine, as long as you can make it to the meeting and don’t forget about it.
Step 3: Run the meeting.
Now, it’s time to sit down and run the meeting. For this, you need the following: 1) A timer 2) A pen 3) 4 pieces of lined paper (we will use the 4th piece of paper in step 4). If you prefer to write on your computer that’s fine as well. At the top of the paper, write down the 1 goal you’ve chosen. On the first paper you are going to write down the first question: “What did I do over the last week that moved me towards my goal?” Set the timer for 4 minutes, and to write down everything you did over the last week that moved you towards your goal. Then do the exact same thing for the two remaining questions; one per sheet of paper. Once that’s completed, you move on to the next step.
Step 4: Develop the Next Week’s Action Plan
On the top of the 4th piece of paper, write “This week’s action plan” as the title. Just below that write out your goal, and then look at your responses to the first question. Choose 3 actions you are going to continue to do, and write those 3 behaviors down on the 4th sheet. Then, look at your answers to questions 2 and 3. Choose a behavior that you’re going to stop doing, and then choose a new one to replace the one you’re giving up. Now you have 4 very clear action steps.
Step 5: Rinse, Repeat, Recycle.
You have established a very clear plan to accelerate your progress towards your goals, but doing this one time isn’t enough. It is critical to sit down each week and to do this. You will be amazed by the improvements you are able to make over time, as this is a built-in system that guarantees constant improvement from week to week. If you improve every week, it is just a matter of time until you achieve your goal.
