Marshall Goldsmith’s daily questions: an end-of-day review for CEOs
A full calendar does not tell you whether you spent effort on the work you intended to do. A short review can make that gap visible.
Review the actions within your control, then change one condition for tomorrow.
Why review effort as well as outcomes?
Goldsmith’s daily questions use active self-questioning to examine effort and personal responsibility. The distinction is between an outcome and what someone tried to do about it. Our short owner’s review below follows that principle without reproducing his question set.
A sales result, project delay or difficult meeting can involve factors beyond your control. That does not make reflection pointless. Separate what happened from the action you took, the action you avoided and the conditions that made it harder.
Choose three questions you can answer honestly
Use questions tied to current priorities. For example: did I protect a focused period for the most important decision? Did I clarify an expectation before asking for urgent work? Did I listen to a customer concern without turning immediately to an explanation?
These are original examples. Your questions may be different. Avoid an ambitious list that takes so long to complete that you abandon it after two days. Start with a review you can actually maintain during an ordinary busy week.
For each answer, add one short piece of evidence. “Yes, I blocked time” is less useful than “I spent twenty uninterrupted minutes comparing the two supplier options.” “No” can be followed by a practical explanation rather than a judgement about your character.
Worked example: the interrupted founder
Imagine an owner who intends to spend the morning on a pricing decision. Messages and routine approvals consume the whole period. At the end of the day, he records that he did not make space for the decision and identifies which approvals repeatedly interrupted him.
For tomorrow, he assigns a temporary approval window and tells the team what qualifies as an urgent exception. The next review asks whether that arrangement helped. If the team still needs him continuously, the issue may be missing authority or information rather than weak personal discipline.
The review is useful because it changes the environment or the plan. Repeatedly giving yourself a disappointing score without changing anything adds another administrative task to an already busy day.
Keep the record small
A notebook or simple document is enough. Use a consistent time, a few questions and a place to note tomorrow’s adjustment. If a number helps, define what it means to you and keep the evidence beside it.
Do not compare personal scores across employees or convert the practice into a performance ranking. People have different roles and constraints, and a private reflection is not a standardised measure of contribution. An owner modelling the practice should make that distinction clear.
Review the questions once a week
Look for a repeated obstacle. A question that always receives the same answer may need a different action, a narrower scope or a more realistic expectation. Ask whether the question still serves an important priority.
Keep outcome measures alongside the reflection where they matter. Effort is not proof that a strategy works. If you consistently put time into an activity with poor results, investigate the activity instead of congratulating yourself for persistence. The daily review should support better judgement, including a decision to change course.
Try it in your business
Choose three leadership actions for the coming week. Each evening, write whether you attempted them, one piece of evidence and one adjustment for tomorrow. At the end of the week, identify a recurring obstacle and decide whether to change the environment, the action or the question.
Sources & editorial note
- Marshall Goldsmith: Six Daily Questions
NEXT MBA editorial analysis, prepared with AI assistance from the public sources above. The applications, scenarios and exercises are NEXT MBA examples, not quotations or transcripts. Product recommendations are ours; they do not imply the speaker’s endorsement of those products. Sources checked on 1 October 2026.