I am feeling slightly spoiled. The 'Great Wake Up' has provided us with some fantastic experiments to try over the last few weeks and this one was no exception. We were asked to identify (upon waking) the one big thing we wanted to deliver that day which would have a positive impact on our lives.

Because of the amount of things I have to get done on a day-to-day basis, I normally have a vague plan of what I need to achieve on a particular day. As I go through my morning routine I quickly run through the things I need to do. I usually do it based around one loose question that I ask myself which is, 'what is the minimum I would need to achieve to feel satisfied at the end of the day and to feel like I'm on track?' I don't literally ask myself that question out loud (as I'm sure those around me would find that somewhat odd) but I have it in the back of my mind as a helpful way of getting through what I need to do and prioritise my ever-increasing tasks. I'm not very good with stress, so this is my way of helping keep that to a minimum.

Once I've done this, my day focuses on getting those one or two things done. Anything else that I achieve over and above that is a bonus and is a great way of making me feel like I've been extra good! It's a method that tends to work well for me.

With this experiment I really tried to pick the one key thing I wanted to do that day. However I quickly discovered that was the easy part. Getting it done before anything else proved much more difficult. Other things took over and distracted me, and it required real discipline to be able to do this without falling into the distraction trap.

One morning I decided to mix things up a bit and I set myself the goal of feeling calm and relaxed as my one big thing. Whilst the intention was clear, I found that as I hadn't made the task more specific it was much harder to achieve. This is when I would find myself completely forgetting what I'd set for that day and then simply not doing it. When I got caught up in the day to day activities, I find it much easier to put a non-specific task to the back of my mind and neglect it.

Overall for me, this was a slightly different way of doing something that I already do. It was a great way of testing my usual morning routine to see if there was a better way of doing what I do. The key learning for me was to keep the 'one big thing' specific to make it easier to achieve.