Setting up a Daily Review

[00:00:00] You're listening to the Daily Five, an experimental podcast by Aurooba, where I talk about something for five minutes. So let's get to it, shall we? All right. So as I mentioned in the last episode, I sat down and reviewed my goals for the year. I ended up adjusting one goal and adding two more. One of the two new goals I added was of course hitting 365 episodes of The Daily 5, because that's been on my mind since I first started.

[00:00:38] In case you're curious, I have at least one goal in each of the five areas I talked about: personal, interpersonal, health, financial ,and professional, and in total I have 6 large goals for the year. I found this to be a pretty good number of goals for me, not so many that it's impossible and not so few that it feels lacking.

[00:01:02] After I did that, the next thing was to set up some personal accountability around these goals. I'm taking it slow and I don't wanna spend too much time building a personal productivity system. And because, you know, as we've talked about before, spending too much time building and tweaking your system is really a form of procrastination.

[00:01:23] So for now, I just built the daily check-in that I wanna do about my goals, plus tracking a few extra things that are important to me. So let's walk through it, shall we? My daily check-in template lives in Notion, which I find to be an excellent tool for long-term data tracking. This template starts when I wake up.

[00:01:46] It's something I used to do before and I really love doing it. I wake up and reflect for a moment on how I feel and I log that. This is typically something I do on my phone and it's a dropdown that I can add to anytime. For example, I might say that I feel rested or that I feel anxious or that I have a headache.

[00:02:07] It's just a quick check-in. But one that was instrumental last year in helping me identify triggers for my migraines. Once you've been checking in with yourself for months, the patterns, they become clear, and it's kind of cool to see what you can deduce from that amount of data on yourself.

Next, I have a small habit tracker, [00:02:30] George Washington style that I've been using for the last three years. It's just some daily habits that I wanna stay accountable on. One, did I journal today? Two, did I do some form of movement or exercise today? Three, did I wake up at the time I wanted to? Four, did I do something spiritual today? And five, did I get eight hours of sleep today?

[00:02:56] There are seasons where I hit these habits and actions consistently and seasons when I'm a little off. I don't judge myself. It's more about tracking the patterns in my life and reminding myself that on the days I do hit all these habits or actions, I feel happier and I'm able to be better in service of other people around me.

[00:03:16] Then at the end of the day, I rate my productivity out of 10. This is also a great data point and it helps me identify patterns in my productivity and issues I might need to fix. And I also check in with how I feel at the end of day. Because that can help you assess something a little bit deeper. Sometimes you're not as productive, but you feel really great and it's interesting to explore why that might be.

[00:03:40] Then as I'm going to bed, I reflect on the whole day and I choose an overall feeling for the day. And I also check in on one other thing? Did I make progress on my goals today? This is a simple checkbox that I can tick and then I can choose the goal or goals I made progress on. Like everything else, this is a no judgment.

[00:04:00] And it's more about observing my actions rather than blaming myself for not doing something. Sometimes we don't want the things we say we want, and the best way to figure that out is to see it in your actions on a day-to-day basis. A check-in isn't about forcing yourself to do something. A check-in is about staying in tune with yourself and being consciously thoughtful about how you go about your day.

[00:04:25] That's how I like to look at it. And that's it for the daily review. There'll be more added to this as I layer the reviews, and we'll talk about that in the next few episodes. But to begin with, the daily check-in is actually very, very simple.

[00:04:45] Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.