We all have those days when we need to make progress on a key project but keep getting pulled in different directions. Set your Daily North Star to identify your top priority each day and organize your time to ensure you nail it.
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5-second summary
Identify your top priority each day.
Block time on your calendar for focused work to ensure you hit your goal.
Feel more productive and accomplished!
What You Will Need
Calendar.
Optional: Document for notetaking.
Play Resources
Confluence to-do list template
How to make time for work that matters
How to set a Daily North Star to prioritize your work
When you need to focus on a key project but feel distracted, use the Daily North Star to identify your top priority. This will help you organize your time and stay on track.
About This Play
What is a Daily North Star?
A Daily North Star is one mission-critical piece of work that you want to accomplish by the end of the day. Setting this goal helps you prioritize and stay focused when the unexpected questions, requests, and interruptions come up.
Why run the Daily North Star Play?
Every project has trade-offs.
Could you complete the project faster? Yes, but you might need to spend more money or risk overworking team members or reducing quality.
Could you cut costs? Yes, but then the final product might not fully meet user needs, or the project might take longer to complete.
Running the Project Trade-off Analysis Play helps teams analyze these trade-offs, make strategic decisions, and stay aligned throughout the project.
When should you create a Daily North Star?
Daily North Stars are most effective when they’re set at the beginning of the day. You can also run this same Play at the beginning of the week, looking at the week as a whole.
3 benefits of Daily North Stars
Research shows that setting realistic goals, like a Daily North Star, helps you:
- Organize your time for maximum focus and success
- Stay on track when the inevitable curveballs hit
- Hit your goals and feel more accomplished
1. Gather your priorities
At the beginning of each week, compile the tasks and work you need to accomplish by the end of the week.
Ask for guidance
If you’re not sure what all needs to be done by the end of the week, start a list of what you’re working on. Then bring it to your leader, and ask for guidance with a question like, “Here’s a list of what I plan to do this week. Can you confirm I’ve captured everything and help me prioritize?”
2. Pick one priority
Ask yourself, “If I could only get one thing done today, what would it be?” Pick that one (yes, one) (no, really – just one) mission-critical piece of work you want to accomplish that day. This clear target will help you stay focused when the inevitable questions, requests, and distractions start rolling in.
Be realistic
- Don’t choose a large task that’s unrealistic to finish in a day, like building out an entire campaign or feature. Research shows setting large goals for short amounts of time sets you up for failure, which hurts your confidence and performance on future goals.
- Don’t choose a task that’s too small either, like writing only the introduction to a blog post or finishing something that only takes a few minutes. Research shows setting the bar too low results in accomplishing less in the long run.
- Pick a goal that you have a good chance of achieving if you stay focused on it that day.
3. Block your calendar
Now comes the key to success: Block off time on your calendar to focus on accomplishing your primary goal for the day.
This is called “timeboxing,” a time management technique that allocates a fixed amount of time for an activity. Timeboxing is proven to work because:
- It helps you take control. You set the time to do the task and block out all distractions during that time.
- It reduces procrastination, as you set a realistic, finite time for a task and stick to it.
- It helps colleagues see what your critical work is.
- It’s a record of what you’ve done.
4. Reflect and repeat
At the end of each day, take a few moments to review what you’ve accomplished and think about tomorrow’s North Star.
If you nailed your goal, congrats! Take note of what helped you succeed, and consider if you could tackle a slightly larger task or goal tomorrow.
If you didn’t complete it, that’s ok! Think about what blocked you, and use that to plan your next day.
- Was your goal too ambitious for one day? Try the Capacity Planning Play or the $10 game. (See “Pro tip.”)
- Did you set aside enough time? Try a Get $#!t Done Day to build in more time for deep work.
- Were there unexpected interruptions? Identify where they came from (Slack? Last-minute requests or meetings?), and take steps to reduce them tomorrow.
Try the $10 game
If you’re struggling to fit in all that you want or need to do, try the $10 game. Assign a dollar value to each task on your list based on how much time you expect it to take (e.g., $2 for a bigger task, $0.50 for a small task).
But remember: You only have $10.
If the total is adding up to more than $10, you may be trying to accomplish too much in one day. If your total is equal to or greater than $10, but it’s made up of $0.50 here and $1 there, you may be focusing too much on small tasks and not enough on the work that will make meaningful progress toward your Daily North Star.
Follow-up
Share your Daily North Star or a Weekly Team Update in a quick, asynchronous recap with your day-to-day communication tool (like Slack) or a video messaging tool (like Loom). Encourage your teammates to do the same to enhance communication without more meetings and stay informed about what everyone’s working on.
