Hi, I’m Chad Moore. You’re receiving this email as you signed up for my Newsletter, called Presence.

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Hi, I’m Chad Moore. You’re receiving this email as you signed up for my Newsletter, called Presence. I appreciate you being here and reading! I’d love to hear from you, send a reply if you want to chat. 

Visual Tools for Focus - The Highlight

Highlight!

Welcome to the first Visual Tool for Focus!

I’m excited to share all these tools that I’ve picked up along my way. These are intended to be easy to use, and reuse regardless of which particular todo or note-taking tools you use.

For most, you can do these digitally or on paper. It’s up to you. I’d be super interested to hear from you if you put these into practice. And how they work for you (or not). Let me know!

The Highlight!

The folks at Make Time use a technique called the Daily Highlight. The authors of The One Thing use a similar concept. I’ve also heard this as “eating the frog” as well.

The concept is simple but may not always be easy. It’s really about planning. The goal is to find the single most important thing you need to do that day. Be it the evening before, or first thing that day.

In Make Time the authors suggest planning your day as such:

We want you to begin each day by thinking about what you hope will be the bright spot. If, at the end of the day, someone asks you, “What was the highlight of your day?” what do you want your answer to be? When you look back on your day, what activity or accomplishment or moment do you want to savor? That’s your Highlight.

More details in their blog post here.

In The One Thing Gary Keller and Jay Papasan expresses the idea as such:

What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

If the biggest thing you need to do today is unpleasant, folks call this Eating the Frog

If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”

More on that here on this blog post.

How to

Whatever you choose to call it, here’s how to focus on the single biggest/most important task you need to do.

Make it visible

You have options. Put it on a post-it and attach it to your monitor. Write it in your notebook, make it a task in your task management system, tweet and tell folks your intention for the day.

Pick one.

Whatever it takes for you to see and think about the single most important thing you can do.

If you’re struggling with overwhelm, try to break down the concept into its smallest components, and make one of them your Highlight.

Celebrate

Once you complete your Highlight, celebrate! Is it something you enjoyed or struggled with you still want to feel the value in your body.

Behavior change experts say a small physical celebration helps you wire a new behavior into your mind. My favorite mini-celebration? A self-five.

Self Five!

It doesn’t have to be a huge thing, a simple positive feeling that you bake into the ritual of completing your most important thing.

Will this work for you?

Too simple? Too hard to think of just one thing in a busy life? What will you struggle with if you try this?

Did you try it? How’d it go?

Reply and let me know.

Audio Version

Visual Tools for Focus - Highlight | Racket

Visual Tools for Focus - Highlight by @chadgmoore

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Chad Moore @Chadgmoore

Our yesterdays are dreams. Our tomorrows are uncertain. All we have is right now. Presence is about being in the moment.

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