Good, Love, Best

Sometimes you hear or read something and it just hits something inside. Like this quote from Karen Lamb: “A year from now, you’ll wish you started today.” You know how that feels, don’t you? You’ve been there before, perhaps you’re there today. 

The only way to make an omelet is to break a few eggs, so today I want to encourage you to break a few eggs in your daily rhythm and set yourself up for success. How? By critically examining all of your activities and asking the hard question: Is this the best use of my time to move my vision for my future forward? 

Think about a year from now. Where are you at in life? What’s important to you? What have you accomplished? With that future state in mind, here’s a helpful tool called “Good, Love, Best” to filter out the stuff you do that doesn’t help you move forward. Here’s how the tool works:

• On a piece of paper (or spreadsheet), make a list of the tasks & activities you do throughout the day, the week, and the month.
• Label three columns adjacent to your list with “Good”, “Love”, & “Best”.
• Evaluate each item on the list placing an “X” in the “Good”, “Love”, & “Best columns for any items that meet the following criteria:
  • Good: Something you KNOW you are good at doing
  • Love: Something you ACTUALLY love doing
  • Best: Something you CLEARLY SEE as the best use of your time
• Highlight any item that has an “X” in all three categories. What would a year from now look like if these items got 80% of your focus? Every single day.

*TIP: Best practice is to go through the list 3 separate times, once for each category.

As with any self-awareness tool, the value you get from it is equivalent to the time and effort you put into it. You cannot do everything and expect to accomplish any one thing well. Find ways to delegate or delete those items that do not have all three columns checked. 

A year from now you’ll be happy you did.