The cornerstone of The Today System is the daily score. It tells you how effectively you followed through on your priorities for the day—based on how many items you committed to getting done.
The daily score is critical to establishing a good habit of daily planning and reflection. But it only tells you the story from day to day. And while that can definitely be helpful for taking care of short-term improvements, long-term improvement requires something more.
That’s where it helps to look at your longer term scores.
The first step to longer-term improvement is the weekly reflection. Taking time to pull together your scores for the past week and see what your week average is can give you insight you otherwise wouldn’t get.
There have been many times where I felt like I fell short during the week, but as I looked at my week’s score, I was above .750–which means I met more than 75% of my important commitments. And I walked away with a much better feeling. Though I may not have gotten done as much as I had wanted to, I got done a decent amount of what was both important and what I committed to.
This same reflection can (and should) be scaled up to longer time frames. Look at your monthly, quarterly, and yearly scores. See how you did during those periods—especially when you might have had a bad string of days (or even weeks). This can help illustrate to you that you’re running a marathon, not a sprint.
The long run is just that—both long and a run. And like any long run, it will have its periods of relative ease and extreme difficulty. Setting realistic expectations for yourself and measuring against those—as opposed to uninformed hopes and dreams—is important to stay positive and productive.
So know your numbers—today, this week, and beyond!
