286: 3 Questions To Ask Yourself Daily To Feel Focused and In Control Of Your Time

Hi there. You’re listening to the Leading Lady podcast. I’m your host, AliceAnne Loftus, and I’m a certified professional coach specializing in leadership and work-life balance. I work with clients to shift their limiting beliefs, insecurities, and self-doubt. This podcast will be filled with tools and strategies to help high-achieving women like you feel connected, empowered, and in the lead of your life, both personally and professionally. Let’s transform your life starting now. Lead yourself, the rest will follow.

Hi there. For today’s episode, I’m gonna walk you through the three questions that I ask myself every single morning.

I like to get up before everyone else in my house gets up. That first cup of coffee in silence allows me to really sit with myself, think about my core values, think about my priorities, plan out my day, and really just get in the right frame of mind so that I know that I can move throughout my day with purpose and intention.

I’m so excited to share these three questions with you. I have developed these questions and modified them and tweaked them and really perfected them, not only for myself, but they are usually the first exercise or first process that I walk through with my coaching clients to help them feel more focused and more in control of their time and how they’re managing their priorities.

I’ve also shared it with many members of the Leading Lady community. If you’ve ever been to any of my live workshops or heard me speak about priority management or time management, I always bring this exercise back into it, because I truly believe that it is the foundation of really identifying what your core values are and choosing where you’re going to put your focus and how you’re gonna prioritize your day.

Why I Moved Away From To-Do Lists

So let’s get started. Oftentimes, when I get a new client, she will come to me and tell me that she feels very overwhelmed, scattered, doesn’t feel like she has enough time, and that most days she ends her day feeling like she didn’t accomplish everything she’d set out to do. Now, I don’t know about you, but to-do lists can often feel very daunting and heavy on my shoulders.

I’ve actually gotten away from doing to-do lists, and I really just try to focus on what’s most important in the day and how I’m going to feel best about my day and accomplish what I said was my top priority.

So like I said, how I start my morning every morning is that first hour by myself. That hot cup of coffee, the house is quiet, everyone’s asleep, and I’m getting to really just sit in my own thoughts and think about what’s most important to me for the day.

1. Be Proactive Towards Your Goals

The first question I ask myself is, “What do I need to do today that is going to be proactive towards my goals?” Now, I used to ask myself, “What would I need to do today that was most productive?” And I found that as a high-achieving woman, I needed to stop measuring myself on how I produced, how much I got done in the day.

That’s a very hard mindset to change. When you’re a high-achieving woman, when you’re type A, when you are used to ticking boxes and crossing things off lists, it feels very good to be able to track all the things you get done. But it’s a dangerous way to measure happiness, success, or value. So I changed the question to, “What do I need to do today that is proactive towards my goals?”

So what does that mean, to be proactive towards your goals? Well, to be proactive is to be solution-focused, forward-focused, to look at the big picture and understand that you don’t have to accomplish everything in the day. You just have to take a step forward and not react to your day, not react to the stimulus around you or to the chaos or whatever is waiting for you when the workday begins.

It’s really about, “How can I be proactive towards my goals?” So let’s say you have a goal of creating your third quarter marketing plan. You might put on your list that something proactive to do towards that goal would be to have a meeting with your marketing team, or to have time to look back at first quarter, or how you did last year in the third quarter, to do your research.

You don’t have to complete the marketing plan in that day, but what steps are you going to take that are proactive towards reaching your goal of getting that done? And oftentimes, for myself and for the clients that I work with, just identifying the first step of what you can do that is getting you closer to achieving your goals, the rest just begins to flow.

So that first question is incredibly important in understanding that you don’t have to commit to yourself that the whole project is going to get done. You just have to commit to yourself that you’re going to take the first step towards whatever your goal is for the day.

2. Make Yourself Proud

The second question I ask myself is, “What can I do today that is gonna make me most proud of myself?” As women, we are taught not to feel proud. We are taught not to show pride. I think that that is an incredibly sad disservice that we have put upon ourselves or that others have put upon us. Feeling proud of ourselves, feeling joy, pride, accomplishment, success, those are good feelings.

We need to celebrate ourselves, and we need to give ourselves a pat on the back because we’ve made ourselves proud. That doesn’t mean that we do things so that others give us accolades or so that we get attagirls from other people. We’re not looking for compliments from others here. We’re really asking ourselves, “How do I wanna show up today in a way that’s gonna make me feel most proud of myself, so that when I go to bed tonight and put my head on my pillow, I feel good about the person I was today?”

So oftentimes, this can be something very small. Like, “I would be really proud of myself if I took 30 minutes to just take care of myself,” whatever that looks like: exercise, meditation, a phone call with a friend. “I would feel really proud of myself if I didn’t yell at my kids over their homework today,” or if I showed more compassion towards a neighbor.

I don’t know. Sometimes feeling proud of myself, well, it seems these days, is just putting on real clothes and not being in my pajamas, working from home. So I think that whatever it is, there’s no judgment. It’s what needs to happen today so that you’re going to feel most proud of yourself. When you put your head on your pillow that night, you’re gonna say, “Yeah, I’m really proud of myself and how I showed up today.”

3. Purge What No Longer Serves You

The third question that I ask myself is, “What can I purge today that no longer serves me?” Oh my gosh, this is oftentimes the hardest question. For me, I’m kind of a minimalist. It’s easy for me to let stuff go, tangible things. But I really hold on to things in my mind. There’s clutter in my mind. I think about a fight that I might have had, or an argument, or I hold on to negative mind chatter, or I beat myself up over something I said that maybe I wish I had thought through a little bit longer.

So I hold on to those things, those negative thoughts, in my mind. So oftentimes when I’m thinking about what I need to purge, I’m thinking about how I need to let go of those thoughts. Sometimes, though, when I answer this question, I might say to myself, “You know, I really need to purge that recycling bag that’s been in my mudroom that we’ve been kind of kicking to the side for the last three weeks,” or, “I need to purge that stack of papers that’s on my desk.”

So it really doesn’t matter if it’s clutter in your home or in your office, tangible clutter, but you can also purge the things, the thoughts, the feelings that you have in your mind. You can purge relationships that no longer bring you joy, or toxic friendships, or interactions that you have with toxic employees or toxic coworkers, whatever you’re holding onto that no longer serves you.

And it doesn’t have to be anything grandiose. Like I said, it could be that stack of magazines that’s sitting by the garage door, or it could be fighting with your teenager about homework. That doesn’t serve either of you, so you can say, “Today, I’m gonna purge that. I’m not even gonna go there.”

Setting the Foundation for Your Day

So these three questions, I know they’re incredibly short, simple questions, but they really just set the foundation for how you want to move throughout your day. You don’t have to put a whole lot of focus into them after you do this exercise in the morning. And I do suggest that you do it in the morning, so that it’s fresh and it’s like brushing your teeth.

You can set these intentions while you’re brushing your teeth. It’s really that quick of an exercise. You do it, and maybe you don’t even think about it after that. Your subconscious will bring it through. It’s like you’ve manifested it. You’ve put it out there that those are the things that are important to you.

That’s how you wanna show up. You’re going to be proactive towards your goals. You’re gonna make yourself proud by showing up as the person you wanna be. And you’re gonna purge the things that no longer serve you, either tangible or conceptual: relationships, thoughts, piles of magazines. Get the clutter out of the way so you can focus on the things that are really important to you.

Sharing Your Three P’s

So just to recap, the three questions are: What can I do today that is proactive towards my goals? Number two, what can I do today that is gonna make me most proud of myself? And number three, what can I purge today that no longer serves me?

If you wanna share your thoughts with me, if you wanna tell me how you’re setting these intentions every day… Like I said, I write these in the margin of my day planner, or sometimes I type them in the notes section of my smartphone, and sometimes I even text them to a friend.

Many clients text me what their… well, I call them the three P’s. They text me what their three P’s are, and I will always share with you what my three P’s are for the day, because I think that it shows that no matter what it is, how we’re setting those intentions, that’s what’s at the forefront of our mind.

And that’s also why I don’t want you to spend a ton of time on this exercise. I want you to just ask yourself the question and honor whatever thoughts come out, whatever you’re called to say, “Yeah, that’s important to me today.” Be authentic with yourself. Be honest with yourself, and don’t judge yourself.

So if you have a friend that you can share it with, or if you want to reach out to me and do the exercise with me, I promise you I’m doing them every day. And so I hope this was extremely helpful for you. Let me know what you think.

And until next time, take the lead.

Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the Leading Lady podcast. You can find all of the links and information mentioned in this episode at www.leadinglady-coaching.com. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe to the show so you don’t miss any future episodes. While you are there, it would mean the world to me if you would take a few seconds and leave me an honest review. This will allow me to be able to help other high-achieving women find inspiration, connection, and develop strategies to live and lead with purpose and intention. See you here next week.