Coaching Insights: Good Days and Bad Days

I was working recently with a municipal manager coaching client. They were struggling with, and challenged by, the seemingly never-ending prioritization shifting, causing chaos in scheduling. The days were a grind lately. To help manage stress and improve focus, I suggested a simple two-week exercise: at the end of each day, I instructed them to identify and score experiences as a +1, 0, or -1. A +1 represents activities, interactions, or accomplishments that generated energy, momentum, or a sense of progress. A -1 reflects frustrations, recurring obstacles, unfinished loops, or tasks that drained energy and attention. A 0 captures neutral activities that were necessary but neither particularly positive nor negative.

Over the course of two weeks, patterns often emerge. By tracking and ranking these experiences, I noted that you can better understand what is creating value, what is consuming disproportionate time and energy, and where small adjustments could have an outsized impact. The objective is not to eliminate every challenge, but to become more intentional about where your attention goes, build resilience around inevitable disruptions, and create a clearer path toward a more sustainable workload and leadership approach. HT to Jim Collins for the system.