My Ideal Day

It was around 11:30 PM on a Thursday night a little more than 7 years ago. I was sitting at my home office desk working late into the night. What was I working on? Two words – Gemba Academy.

You see, when we first started Gemba Academy back in 2009 I had a “day job” and did most of my Gemba Academy work in the evenings and weekends.

But, on this particular night I wasn’t creating content or working on marketing strategy. Instead, I created a one-page document that, quite literally, changed my life.

I called the document “My Ideal Day.” The purpose of the document was simple. I wanted to identify what I believed my ideal day would look like once I was able to focus 100% of my professional attention to Gemba Academy.

So I simply noted down what I’d do the minute I woke up until I went to sleep later that night. This included the work I’d do for Gemba Academy as well as how my personal life, in particular my family life, would change.

The document didn’t take long to create… maybe 20 minutes. I knew, in my mind, what I wanted to happen so writing it down didn’t take long.

Once I was done I printed the document and kept it where I could see it. And, even when I couldn’t see the document the things I noted had already been indelibly burned into my brain.

This vision then pushed me and encouraged me to sacrifice many, many, many late nights and weekends in order to get that next course completed as well as any other Gemba Academy responsibility that needed to be taken care of.

Identify Your Ideal Day

Michael Hyatt has blogged about how he likes to plan out his his ideal week which is also really good stuff.

But, in my opinion, I’d encourage you to start by identifying your ideal day. Simply take out a piece of paper, or open your favorite word processor, and chronicle the perfect day. What time will you wake up? What will you do in the morning, mid morning, afternoon, and evening? What time will you go to bed?

Then, once you’re done, take a step back and figure out what you need to do in order to make this ideal day a reality. And don’t limit yourself… if you’re ideal day has you living in Italy figure out a plan to make it happen. And then once you have the plan… take action!

What Do You Think?

What do you think? Have you ever done something like this? If so, how did it impact you? And, if you’ve never done anything like this do you think it’s worth a shot? Why? Why not?

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