Dru's Notes

A single digit between -4 and +4 scores each day. Two questions follow it each night. An app called Apex correlates a year of those scores against habits, sleep and mood, which ranks cold showers at +0.7, phone off after 10pm at +0.7 and laptop off after 9pm at +0.6.

Show Notes

A single digit between -4 and +4 scores each day. Two questions follow it each night. An app called Apex correlates a year of those scores against habits, sleep and mood, which ranks cold showers at +0.7, phone off after 10pm at +0.7 and laptop off after 9pm at +0.6.

Featuring: Margaret J. Wheatley

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Chapters:

(00:00) Wheatley on reflection
(00:10) Scoring each day between minus four and plus four
(00:26) Apex correlates habits against tempo
(00:47) A cold shower buys 21 earlier minutes
(00:56) Compressing a day to one digit

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Creators and Guests

Host
Dru Riley
Founder of Trends.vc
MW
Guest
Margaret J. Wheatley
Featured in Dru's Notes: 1 Metric for Life Progress: The Daily Tempo Score.

What is Dru's Notes?

One mental model each day in a few minutes. Habits, business, building products and thinking clearly. From Dru Riley, founder of Trends.vc.

"Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful."

Margaret J. Wheatley

I write one number for each day, somewhere between -4 and +4, to score how the day went. I call it my tempo.

Two questions follow each night:

1. If the day was less than 4: What would have made it a 4?
2. If it was 4: What made it great?

I built an app called Apex to correlate my habits against my tempo, sleep and mood.

The habits that add the most points to my tempo:

- Cold showers: +0.7
- No phone after 10pm: +0.7
- No laptop after 9pm: +0.6

On days I take a cold shower, I get to bed 21 minutes earlier.

Reflection is the engine of progress and the number is what gives it something to run on.

Compress a day to one digit to see what actually made the difference.

What number would you give today?