011: Set a Win Condition for Your Day
Welcome to Toolbox Tips, Effective’s weekly newsletter aimed at putting more tools in your productivity toolbox.
One of the hardest things about modern work is its infinite nature. When you check off one task, four more appear as if you’re looking to defeat some productivity hydra. It never stops coming.
The fact that there’s always more to do is a blessing and a curse, too. While it’s great to have fascinating, challenging work to keep you stimulated, it’s also easy to never stop working and fail to celebrate successes because there’s always another challenge to overcome.
Sounds pretty depressing, huh? Unfortunately, it’s the reality many knowledge workers like yourself live in. This endless state of work very well may play into the high rates of worker burnout as well.
So what’s the answer? If work never ends and you can’t change that fact, what do you do?
Set a win condition for your day.
A win condition is a simple declaration that says:
If I get X done today, I can consider this a good day of work.
For example, I might say, “If I finish editing and publishing this video, I can consider this a good day’s work.” While I might have fifteen unfinished tasks on my list, I can look back and see I did what I thought was most important — and that’s a win on its own.
Having a straightforward win condition as a measure of success for the day gives you an anchor point to evaluate if the day went well so you can celebrate your win or adjust if you didn’t reach it.
ACT: Set your win condition for tomorrow, then, at the end of the day, celebrate what you’ve achieved.
Notent Notables
Welcome, welcome, welcome to our 28 new members in the last week here at Effective! So great to have you.
This week on the YouTube channel, I shared my top five customizations for Obsidian. I tend to keep my vault pretty simple, but these plugins and themes bring high utility for me.
For Your Enjoyment
I found some time to stream last week, too! Hope you enjoy.
Here to Help
I can help you in three ways on your productivity journey when you’re ready:
- Have a question about your system or productivity concept and need help? Ask it here.
- Wanting to level up your Obsidian skills? Check out Obsidian Made Simple.
- Looking to streamline your PKM workflow? Get a 60 day free trial of Readwise.
That’s all for this week. Until next time, stay effective!
We share affiliate links in this newsletter, so we may make a small commission from purchases you make.