Benjamin Franklin was a prominent person, polymath and one of the founding fathers of United States of America. He was printer, politician, diplomat, scientist, inventor and very productive person. Just brief depiction of his biography, achievements, inventions and legacy demonstrate high level of productivity. For this reason, I wondered whether we can learn something useful from this person about tracking goals and being productive. I read this and these articles and learned about two questions he used everyday for checking what he has done on that day.
Franklin’s questions are very simple yet effective. You just ask two questions to yourself and give honest replies. Before using these questions, review the goals you set for yourself. If you have read my previous post about setting goals and reaching them, then, I assume you already have set your goals for this year or some near future. So review your goals every day and use these two simple questions for tracking your performance.
The 1st question, while planning a day, ask yourself:“What good shall I do this day?”This is very effective question, it makes you consider your goals and current activities and list tasks that you need to get done. I often try to write down my tasks so I will not forget about them. And I also try to have only up to three tasks for one day, not more.More than three tasks often will not get finished in one day.
The 2nd question, at the end of the day, ask yourself: “What good I have done today?”This question is also very actual and almost identical with 1st question. Just go through your to-do list and tick the tasks you have done from the list. The tasks you could not do today can be reviewed and get done tomorrow also.
This is all you need to do every day for reaching goals and producing good results. With these two questions, evaluate your performance every day. To be honest, before coming across these two questions, I rarely reviewed what I have done during my days. Though I used to make a mental or written list of tasks and finish most of them, I rarely consciously reviewed my performance with questions. From now on, I will try to use these questions and see what will come out of this process.