Coaching practices for Goldsmith Daily Questions

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Goldsmith Daily Questions, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • I’m hitting every productivity target and somehow feeling emptier by the week
  • When I check in on myself it’s always "how did the day go," and the answer always seems to ride on things outside my hands
  • When it’s just me, I let myself off the hook quietly
  • One bad day and I spiral, treating it like proof I’m failing
  • I’ve tried other people’s checklists and they always track things I don’t actually care about right now

Practices that may help

  1. The Morning Questions
    Marshall Goldsmith’s morning questions are a daily active question routine in which you score yourself each morning on whether you "did your best" to pursue specific values-based commitments the previous day. The practice reframes self-monitoring from passive measurement ("how did X go?") to active responsibility ("did I try?"), which research on active questions suggests produces greater engagement and honest self-assessment. The evidence base is practitioner-clinical; large-scale trials are limited.
  2. Include a happiness question — not as an outcome goal but as a signal
    Add "Did I do my best to be happy today?" to the list — not as a target, but as a daily quality-of-life sensor.
    The Morning Questions
  3. Reframe passive questions as active questions
    Ask "did I do my best to...?" rather than "how was my...?" — the word "try" changes what the question measures.
    The Morning Questions
  4. Sharing scores with an accountability partner
    Send your daily scores to someone — the act of disclosure meaningfully increases follow-through.
    The Morning Questions
  5. Weekly trend analysis from daily scores
    Review your scores at the end of each week to spot patterns rather than reacting to single-day noise.
    The Morning Questions
  6. Design a personal question list that matches your current growth goals
    Build a short list of active questions that track the behaviors most relevant to your life right now — not a fixed template.
    The Morning Questions
  7. The daily scoring ritual
    Score each question at the same time each day — consistency matters more than perfect accuracy.
    The Morning Questions
  8. The three-point daily self-examination
    End each day by asking three questions Zengzi — Confucius’s disciple — prescribed: loyalty, trustworthiness, mastery.
    Confucian Self-Cultivation: The Mencius Approach
  9. The Daily Examen: Reviewing the Day
    The Examen is a short, structured evening review from the Ignatian tradition: you replay the day with gratitude and honest attention to where you felt drawn toward or away from your values, then carry one resolve into tomorrow. It is a centuries-old contemplative practice; its benefits are best described as mechanistically plausible and widely reported rather than established by controlled trials.
  10. Graduating a question when the behavior becomes automatic
    Retire a question from the list when it scores consistently 8 or above — mastery earned is bandwidth freed.
    The Morning Questions

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