With 2018 coming to a close, I find myself in a rather reflective mood. As much as I look forward to what I can do in the new year, I always like to look back first, and see what I’ve done so far.

What did I do well?

What did I do poorly?

What did I learn from it all?

This is a practice I recommend all entrepreneurs take up, as self-measurement is often the first step to self-improvement. The best way to achieve a goal is to set up steps to accomplish it, but the best way to make your accomplishments matter is to set goals worth achieving in the first place. Focusing on productive strategies and improving on flawed ideas is what helped me to accomplish all that I have so far, and in this blog, I will help you to do the same.

The most important lesson I want you to learn is that it’s okay for your plan to change.

You see, I used to fill my personal and business calendars with statements, things like “I will do ABC” or “I will start XYZ.” These were all well and good, but in 2018, I tried something new. Instead of making statements that I had to achieve, I started posing questions that I had to answer.

For my personal calendar, I would ask questions like:


Am I happy?

Answering this compelled me to assess how my choices and activities were affecting my mood, helping me to focus on the positive influences in my life and avoid of improve on the negative influences.


Am I grateful?

Answering this helps me to better appreciate the things in life that matter most to me, and keeps me from taking my blessing for granted.


Do I like my job?

Answering this reminds me why I do what I do for a living, and allows me to better tackle the issues that come with my career.


Do I feel well?

Answering this reinforces activities that bring wellness into my day to day life, and helps me to cut out bad habits.


How can I help someone today?

Finding a solution for this reminds me that, in addition to improving my own day, I can do my part to improve someone else’s as well.


Do I spend enough time with my family?

Answering this one keeps me from getting lost in my forms and charts. In addition to reminding me to call my parents and sister abroad, it helps me set no less than two hours per day to be with my husband and daughter. It’s a promise I make to them and myself: No interruptions, no distractions, just family.

While answering all those questions helps improve my personal life, I strive to better my professional activities and the activities of my team by asking these question in my business calendar:


What is my #1 priority right now?

Identifying my most pressing issue immensely aids in organizing my schedule and my teams’ schedules around me.


How can I achieve my #1 priority faster?

It’s not about being impatient, rather, it’s about pushing myself to think of creative ways to get faster results.


What tasks should I stop doing?

Sometimes cooking the entrée on time means putting the side dish on the back burner, and answering this question assists me in arranging which tasks I accomplish in which order.


What tasks am I procrastinating?

This question keeps my answer to the last question in check. As tempting as it can be to keep postponing certain tasks, the fact of the matter remains they all must get done, which means they all must have time made for them sooner rather than later.


What questions am I not asking myself?

This is perhaps the most important question I ask myself, which is precisely what makes it the most difficult one to answer. Looking over my answers to all the other questions usually helps point me in the right direction, but keeping an open mind and being able to see past the obvious, now that is how the real solutions are found.


Switching from statements to questions enabled me to do something I couldn’t do as easily before, it allowed me to reflect on myself and offered perspectives I never would’ve noticed otherwise. It’s creative challenges like these that bring out the best in me, and once you start following this system, it’ll bring out the best in you.