By day I work as an assistant in the marketing department of a large international corporation. A couple weeks ago in a staff meeting, a member of my team played an interesting joke on the rest of us. She got up to share what she had been working on. And then she said that in 5 minutes, the CFO would walk in the door and ask everyone, “What have you done for me lately?” Meaning, my teammates would have to state, succinctly, what they had done in the past quarter to impact this multi-billion dollar business. Wow. Talk about tension!

As it turns out, she hadn’t actually invited the CFO to our meeting (thankfully!), but it would’ve made for an interesting discussion! And I wondered that if I was similarly put on the spot – but in regards to my personal life – how would I fare? If I had to distill down the all the actions I take on a daily basis to the handful of actions that really, truly matter and make a difference my life, what would I be left with? And if someone I highly respected and admired were to ask me the following 3 questions right now, what would I say?

What are your current top 3 goals in life?

What action will you take today and in the immediate future to reach them?

What progress have you made over the last 3 months?

It was a good exercise, and I definitely know I need to work on clarifying some of my answers. And if you don’t have clear answers to those questions, figure it out now! You can’t fulfill dreams if you don’t know what they are, and you can’t achieve goals that aren’t specific and measurable. And besides…you never know when you may have a pop quiz!