The Founder's Compass
A daily operating discipline. Six checks before the day starts. Three at the end of it. Roughly two minutes in total.
Aircrew do not run checklists because they are forgetful. They run them because judgement degrades under fatigue, pressure and familiarity, and the list is what catches it when it does.
The same is true of running a business. It is true of running a life. This is not a morning routine and it is not a set of affirmations. It is a check.
I spent my RAF years on Victor tankers and Vulcan bombers, in the heat of Ascension Island and the cold of Goose Bay in Labrador. You get tired. The list does not.
If it takes longer than two minutes it gets skipped on the days you most need it.
The value is in the repetition. It is not in the insight. Do not improve it every week.
Especially then. Items get missed on the good days, not the bad ones.
Read and do. Answer each one out loud or on paper. An answer you did not say is not an answer.
Who am I choosing to be today? One word. Behaviour follows identity, so decide the person before you decide the tasks.
If only one thing gets done today, what is it? Movement is not progress. Choose it before the inbox chooses for you.
What am I avoiding? The call, the proposal, the apology, the decision. Growth usually sits behind the thing you are walking around. Put a time on it now, not a promise.
Whose day can I improve? A client, a colleague, a stranger, someone at home. The fastest route to being valuable is being useful.
What am I telling myself that I have not actually checked? Aircraft are lost when the crew trusts what they feel over what the instruments read. "I am terrible at this" is a feeling. Read it against the evidence.
What will I do today that repays the version of me sitting here tomorrow? The workout, the early night, the money not spent, the book instead of the phone.
Aviation keeps a separate checklist for failure, and it always runs in the same order. Aviate. Navigate. Communicate. Never in a different order and never all three at once.
Make no decision in the first ten minutes. Nothing is improved by acting inside the adrenaline. Deal only with what is physically in front of you.
Where are you actually? Write the facts in one column and what you fear it means in another. Do not let the two mix. Most of the weight is usually in the second column.
Who needs to know, and what is the smallest true thing you can tell them right now? Not the full explanation. The accurate one. The explanation can follow.
Land the aircraft before you investigate the failure. Get to the end of the day. The post mortem is not today's job.
A debrief is not a verdict. No blame. No praise. No story. Cause and change only.
What went as planned, and what actually made it go that way? Name the cause so you can repeat it deliberately.
What did not go as planned? Ask what caused it, never who. The moment it becomes about a person you stop learning anything.
What is the single thing you do differently tomorrow? One. A list of ten changes is a list of no changes.
Dead reckoning accumulates error. You never notice drift day to day. You notice it when you stop and take a fix.
Did the week you actually had match the person you said you were going to be on Monday morning?
Where did you go off course, and was the drift a decision or an accident? Chosen drift is fine. Accidental drift is the thing to catch.
What are you correcting for next week? Small and specific. A course correction is a few degrees, not a new destination.
Character is what remains when convenience disappears.
These are not affirmations. Nothing here asks you to tell yourself you are amazing. Every item is behavioural, which means at the end of the day you can say plainly whether you did it or you did not.
Your life is rarely changed by one large decision. It is shaped by several thousand small ones. This is a way of paying attention to the small ones.
The Founder's Compass