The Notion of Daily Questions

By Marshall Goldsmith

One of the most important parts of creating a fulfilling life, an earned life, is figuring out your path and sticking to it. How do you do that? How do you gain insights into the right next steps? In my coaching career, I have learned a lot from mentors, customers, friends, and teachers, and I have used several of them to formulate my coaching going forward. These are the concepts of: 

• the referent group
• the notion of feedforward
• stakeholder-centered coaching
• the business plan review
• the “what’s next” weekend
• daily questions
• building a coaches community (called 100 coaches)

Here, I’d like to explore the notion of the daily questions.

Many of us make to-do lists every day to ensure that we’re getting things done. But how many of us reflect on how we’ve spent our day? How many of us review the lists of things to do and determine how we’ve accomplished them, or if we’ve managed to spend the day as produc- tively as we liked? 

I have found that daily questions are a way to ensure that we not only plan but that we take action. Over the years, as I’ve incorporated such concepts and activities into my coaching as the referent group, the notion of feedforward, stakeholder-centered coaching, the business plan review, and the “what’s next” weekend, I’ve also found that daily questions are a powerful way to keep people on track.

The fact is, we are superior planners and inferior doers. Daily Questions is the tool I picked up a decade and a half ago to deal with my repeating pattern of well-meaning intention followed by unreliable execution. 

I explained it in detail in my book, Triggers, and I included a list of the twenty-two questions that test my daily resolve to match execution with intention, doing with planning. 

The key: Each question begins with “Did I do my best to…” followed by a specific goal such as, “Set clear goals?” and “Exercise?” and “Not waste energy on what you cannot change?” 

At the end of the day, I score each question from a low of 1 to a high of 10, based on how well I tried. 

The process measures effort, not results. 

We can’t always control the outcome, but all of us can try. Some years ago I hired a coach, because I need help sticking to the plan. The coach calls me each evening for my scores. It’s the best enforcement routine I’ve come across for earning a desired outcome. But it can be painful; it’s disheartening to regularly post 1s and 2s for goals that you claim really matter to you. The pain eventually leads to giving up. But if you stay with it, it works. For anything.