The “Daily 5” Concept
The Daily 5 in Business
After listening to the audiobook “The 5 AM Club” by Robin Sharma, I came across the concept of setting 5 mini daily goals — that you can achieve easily — and try to get them done by the end of the day.
Studies have shown that setting mini-goals — or what the author called micro achievements — for your day and commit to achieving them will block negative thoughts like “I wasted a lot of time,” or “My day is ruined,” or “I feel overwhelmed with my agenda today,” and so on. These negative thoughts can affect your mental health and overall performance¹.
Even if you think that you can achieve your daily agenda without any complications, think again. You should expect the unexpected; even if you are the most productive person you know, prepare for the unexpected. Imagine the case that you had an emergency or got interrupted during an important event. There are always unplanned events and times that could rob your whole day, or maybe a week. That can be devastating to some of us.
The idea of breaking your one big task of the day into small chunks of tasks throughout the day is to have the sense of achievement all day long, so in case you got interrupted or the unexpected happens, you can easily delegate the remaining tasks or push them ahead of your schedule instead of having to delay the whole task with no progress and start blaming yourself for not being productive that day or getting overwhelmed during the whole day that you did not accomplish anything — especially if you get a high from achieving goals.
Applying the“Daily 5" concept:
- During your first few hours of the day, list down the 5 mini targets you wish to accomplish for the day, such that if done properly, you will feel that your day was well spent.
- Do this daily. The more you do it and get comfortable with it, the higher the value you will get out of it.
- Keep a journal while you do this daily, and get back to them after achieving them.
- Look back at all the tasks achieved at the end of the week, and you will feel accomplished, which will boost your motivation and increase your confidence and productivity.
The Daily 5 in Education
Although I learned this concept from Robin Sharma’s book, it is good to mention that the concept is also used in education for school teachers². In “The Daily CAFE Website” there is a section about the Daily 5 as they describe the concept for teachers to follow structured literacy time to increase their students’ independence and accountability.
The website also published a report titled “Effective Strategies for Teaching and Learning Independence in Literacy The Daily 5 Literacy Structure, by Dr. Jill Buchan” which can be downloaded from their website. The developers of the “Daily 5” concept stated on the page of the report:
This report delves deeply into the research on teaching practices that most successfully — and consistently — lead students to reading achievement and independent learning skills.
…
Students of research themselves, Gail Boushey and Joan Moser created the Daily 5 to ensure that each student in every class experiences the best possible environment for learning literacy and independence.
That’s it for this post. I hope you enjoyed it.
Take a deep breath and have a nice day.
-Ahmad
References:
[1] Sharma, Robin S. The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning, Elevate Your Life. HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2018.
[2] Boushey, G., & Moser, J.(2021) Daily 5. Retrieved from http://www.thedailycafe.com