Where will you succeed today?
My school’s motto was “Better Everyday“. I kept screaming “Better Everyday, Better Everyday” during Friday morning school assemblies for over six years, but did not really understand what it meant.
I have been overwhelmed with work (happens every 3 months, it’s been a pattern, but more about it some other day). And while I was reflecting on this pile of work, I realized I did get at least one solid item off my list almost every day. But I was stressed as that list kept getting longer.
What if I focused on my successes, rather than failures? What if I could succeed in just one thing everyday?
I reviewed the work I did get done last week and felt very happy. That’s when I twitted:
Nothing motivates more than success. Where will you succeed today?
I wrote it, was proud and went to sleep. But when I booted up my MacBook this morning, I noticed it again.
And I stopped. Thought about where do I want to succeed today. Made a mental note of it. And began working.
This is how my day went:
- By 10.30, I had one client happy. Work was moving slowly on that project, but today we nailed it.
- Around 11.30, I had another client happy. Solved an annoying bug within minutes and the client said “Wahoo! That’s brilliant!”
- One major customer called before noon, complaining about a mail server issue. I talked to my team and gave an update in an hour. By the end of our day, we had a good enough solution in place.
- Shown stick to a project team in our standup meeting at noon. They completed pending work before signing out.
- Worked on cleaning up some malformed XML files in afternoon. This project was facing lot of technical challenges. But I had a working prototype ready at 6.45pm when I left work.
- And I even fixed an annoying bug in PlannerX just before I started this post.
Amazing how much happened by focusing on where I want to succeed today.
And I could say:
Satisfying day. Progress on projects. Made 5 customers happy!
Incremental improvements carried out daily can make transform your life in three months. Focusing on small successes can bring you big victories. I understand that’s what our school wanted us to learn from “Better Everyday”.
Did you get better today?
What are you going to succeed at tomorrow?
I was depressed. Very depressed. Stressed. Failed. Some point of time, she told me: ‘All is well’ and yes, all is well 🙂
Your success is always with you. You need someone to say ‘All is well’.
PS: Kavin can’t speak ‘V’ properly, so we call it: ‘All is bell’. It worked too.