Every morning
The morning check-in
Most mornings are decided by whatever arrives first. A morning check-in is the two minutes before that happens, where you say out loud how you are starting and what the day is actually for, and leave with a plan for it.
What it asks
How you are starting, and what today is actually for.
- How you are, before the day has had a chance to change the answer
- What today is for, in one line rather than a list
- What is in the way of it
- Which of your practices you will work on today
Why a question beats a to-do list
A to-do list is a record of everything you have not done, which is why it grows and why looking at it in the morning is rarely encouraging. A question has an answer and the answer ends. That difference is most of why people keep one and abandon the other.
Naming the day in one line also forces a decision that a list lets you avoid. Twelve things on a list are twelve things you might do. One line is a choice, and the evening is a fair test of whether it was the right one.
The habit matters more than any single answer. A personality type is something you learn once; a morning answered every day for a month is a record of how you actually run, which is a different and more useful thing to own.
How Crystal asks it
Inside the product.
- Two minutes, one question per screen, no typing required to finish.
- It is free and it stays free, however many mornings you answer, and so is the plan it writes.
- It ends on Today's Plan: the practices you picked for today, each under its goal, with the blocks you plan to fill.
- It is also where Today's Gem comes from: 1 sentence about you, every day.
- The answers feed the Evening Reflection, so the two make a pair rather than two separate forms.