First Week of Progress on my MITs

One of the more interesting habits I'm trying to foster is writing down my "Most Important Tasks (MITs)" for the day each morning. There should typically be about three of them, with at least one dealing with long term goals. They should be viewed as the most important tasks, things which get done ahead of all the other little daily activities on my to-do list.

So how did this work after my first week? I've concluded that this really is a good way to set priorities and decide what is important to accomplish each day. Did I actually accomplish them? Well, reviewing my fist week (I keep a journal, which is a requirement for this) showed that I accomplished 63% of them. That's a start, but I clearly need more work on this and want to do better the 2nd week.

However, mid way through the 2nd week I'm facing the reality that I completed 0 out of 3 MITs for the last two days. Part of that was because of family activities (attending a local county fair), and part of that was because I thought it was worthwhile to watch the CNN special series on "God's Warriors".

This brings up some interesting questions. (1) Why didn't I write down the family outing to the county fair as one of the MITs for that day? I probably should have in in retrospect. Family activities are important, and this process is reminding me to keep that perspective. (2) The CNN series was certainly educational, and it was time critical (watch it when it's on, or miss it for the foreseeable future). But was it really the most important task for that evening? You can't do everything you want, so you have to make priority calls. That's what being "effective" is all about. This process is forcing me to clearly think about such priority calls, and the likelihood that I made the wrong choice to view a TV show just because it seemed interesting. Yes it was a good show, but in reality there may have been better ways to spend my time. This is a difficult consideration I simply would not have faced without the processes of specifying my MITs ahead of time.