Crafting Your 3 Wins for the Day Using Agile Results
By using Agile Results, you give yourself an extreme advantage in terms of mastering motivation, productivity, and time management.
The simplest way to start using Agile Results is to adopt the practice of 3 Wins. Simple identify the 3 wins you want to achieve for the day.
Crafting your 3 wins for the day is part art and part science.
Here’s a quick tip on how to do the art part a little better …
One of the things I do is scan my calendar at the start of the day to internalize it. Rather than react to appointments, I want to design my day as much as possible for maximum impact and spend more time in my strengths.
It also informs me of my non-negotiables or specific windows of opportunity.
For example, today I have a few key meetings with influential people. To make the most of the opportunity, I need to carve out some time to
So my short-list of "3 Wins", or "stories", for today are:
- Complete my short-list of hot items to get them off my plate
- Tell and sell a simple story of our team’s unique value
- Simplify the storyboard view of driving business transformation for Enterprise customers
I’ve got a bunch of stuff that's below the line that supports the above, but the above short-list of wins helps me rise above the noise, and claim victory for my day. If I scoped my "wins" too big, I'll quickly know when I’m in the thick of things, and then I'll re-frame the "win" to better express more incremental progress.
One-liner stories work perfectly well. All you need is a quick prompt or reminder of what you're trying to achieve, before getting lost in your tasks. It's how you put a bow on your results, and it’s how you guide your focus, energy, and action throughout the day.
They are "stories" because they reflect a "challenge" and a "change." You are the hero in each one-liner story, where you do something to create the change. And, most importantly, the "value" is in the change (otherwise, it's just same-old, same-old, and you're stuck on the treadmill of life.) Tip – A good way to think about value is to first figure out who it’s for, and then think in terms of benefits they care about, and express it in terms of “better, faster, or cheaper.”
By practicing these one-liner stories, these "3 Wins" for the day, you get better at articulating your value and unique contribution, both to yourself, and to others.
It's not only the secret of getting results, but also the secret of getting better performance reviews.
Note Agile Results is fully explained in detail in Getting Results the Agile Way, a best-seller in Time Management on Amazon.