Has your week mattered?

As we approach the end of the week, I’m asking myself and you…Has your week mattered? I know, it’s a big question.  But in the face of the reality of life (and death), it really should be a question we ask each other and ourselves regularly. I mean, does what you did this week really matter?
 
My intention is not to plunge you into a deep cataclysm of philosophical questioning about ‘What is the meaning of life?’, I actually have the opposite intention. I want to prompt you to think more about your achievements and your pleasure, I want you to track them and reflect on them. This will drive your self-esteem, focus your energy and move you into a more value-based life.
 
Working with people with depression for many years, I understand that two very important factors contribute to the practical movement of mood in a positive direction. To shift depression (purely from a behavioural space) we ask a person to fill in a blank weekly diary split into hours, 7am-8am, 8am-9am etc with words to describe what they did in that slot. So retrospectively they would say, for example, 8am-9am “I drove to work”, or “I got my kids ready for school”, or “I attended a meeting on project x” or in my case “I wrote a Silverline’ing post” (I hope you are enjoying it!). Once the words have been entered, the person scores themselves 0-10 for every hour of their week. Out of 10 (where 10 is a lot and 0 is none) what would you give this particular hour of your life, when thinking about two things, firstly pleasure and then give a separate rating for that same time slot, 0-10 for achievement. In best practice it is done at the end of every hour, although in reality it is often done at the end of the day.
 
This constant feedback to self means that the individual can see how much pleasure and how much achievement they are getting every hour, day, week with a quick glance. Which begs the follow on shift question of, “what can I do differently, to get more pleasure and a greater sense of achievement?”. This has a very clear corresponding shift in mood.
 
Now, why am I talking about this in relation to you? Well, to me this is the same approach to take with thinking about engagement, efficiency, satisfaction, productivity, innovation, meaning and whole load of other great things. Do you understand how what you have done each hour has contributed (or not) to your pleasure and or your sense of achievement? Once you know this information, you can determine whether you want to shift anything.
 
So here is the challenge I set to you today….Take today as an example and start using your outlook calendar (or paper diary) to give yourself two ratings out of 10, a number in pink for pleasure, a number in green for achievement. When you look back at your day it will give you some crucial information and if you can do it for a week you will absolutely start shifting your decisions to deliberate ones (where I feel we want to be) rather than automatic ones.
 
Tell me how you get on either on this thread or hello@dramysilver.com or write to me for a paper template diary.
 
Good luck!
 
Amy is an expert in helping teams, individuals and organisations become more powerful. You can email hello@dramysilver.com or look at http://www.dramysilver.com for more information on the "how to" of being powerful.