Red Days and Green Days
At the end of each day, I ask myself one question.
At the end of each day, I ask myself
“Did I spend this day the way I want to spend my days?”
If the answer is “no” too many days in a week, month, or year — I know I need to make a shift. My wife and I call those “red” days, from the idea of coding a day either “green” (good) or “red” (bad).
Keeping track of them helps you avoid recency bias, and thus overcompensating, if you’re having a red day. Was it the first red day in a long time? Or the fifth one this week?
A few red days are OK, especially if they’re in service of some greater good or goal. And each person has a different red day tolerance.
But, don’t put off fixing those red days for too long.
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.1
Footnotes
-
Annie Dillard in The Writing Life ↩