Every morning
The morning warm-up
Most mornings are decided by whatever arrives first. A warm-up is the two minutes before that happens, where you say out loud how you are starting and what the day is actually for.
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
Why a question beats a plan
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.
- The answers feed the evening reflection, so the two make a pair rather than two separate forms.