Life Skill No. 4: The Month Map

Four easy questions to start the month right

The 1st of the month generally fills me with dread. There are bills to pay, invoices to send, appointments to make for the dog and baby, and that general confusion of how it’s already the beginning of a new month. Here in New York City, the sun is out and the trees are in bloom, but all I can see is the stack of winter coats and sweaters that need to be moved and reorganized for this new season.

The blooming tulips in Fort Greene Park with their greatest admirer

Time marches on, and I obediently follow, struggling to keep up with whatever the month hands me and feeling more like a passenger than the one in the driver’s seat.

For May, I wanted to try something different. I decided to show a little self-leadership and tell this new month what I want from it, and committed to acting with intention. If you’d like, you can do it, too with these four easy questions.

Grab your journal for a quick exercise to articulate what you want from this new month. I promise you won’t take any longer than 8 minutes.

Question #1: Are you currently red, green or yellow?

Red is bad. Green is great. Yellow is somewhere in between. I’ve started asking my coaching clients this at the beginning of every session and it does wonders for me to quickly tune into what they need in the moment. I realized I should do this for myself, too. Right now, I’m yellow-green. Not perfect, but trending upward, and I want to keep up this trend by continuing to prioritize exercise and sleep.

Question #2: What is the most important thing to get right this month?

And, you can only pick one item on your list. I know, you likely have a million and one things that you need to get right, but it’s essential to know your North Star, your P0, the most essential activity that requires your attention this month.

This month, there are many important tasks at hand. I’ll be copyediting my book, landing on the cover design, and the marketing copy. I’ll also be onboarding two new coaching clients. This doesn’t happen very often, because I work with my existing clients for years, so it’s a big deal to bring on new people.

But, even with these critical workstreams, my most important work is to go above and beyond for two speeches I’m giving for Chief in Atlanta and Boston. They are my P0 priority. What’s yours?

Question #3: What’s something fun you’re looking forward to most this month? How can you lean in and enjoy yourself as much as possible?

We need to prioritize personal nourishment just as much as we prioritize excellence and execution. With this question, your job is to articulate how you are going to invest in your well-being and give yourself something to look forward to all month.

I’m most looking forward to Mother’s Day. As someone who waited years to become a mother, the novelty is still not lost on me. I’m planning a fun day of nature and animals with Dev and Taia. Oh, and I want to sleep in late and eat an eclair.

This is the locket I got for my very first Mother’s Day last year. It’s my prized possession. (You can also hear Taia cooing in the background.)

Question #4: Write a haiku that expresses the themes and energy that you want for the month.

A refresher for anyone who can’t remember— a haiku is three lines of un-rhymed poetry— 5 syllables, 7 syllables, then 5 syllables. This is a fun, silly, low-stakes way to express your creativity while also giving thoughtful intention to what you want for the month. It’s not cheating if you use ChatGPT to support you! However you get there is fine by me. Here’s the haiku I wrote, as seen in my 5-year journal.

When it comes to this Life Skill, a little goes a long way.

May you receive everything you want and more this month,

Liz

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Life Skills with Liz Tran is a newsletter archive of ideas and frameworks across business, psychology, spirituality, and relationships that improves the quality of our lives. In each newsletter, executive coach and author, Liz Tran, shares a new Life Skill, brought to life with studies, stories, and ways to practice. Life Skills is a gentle and real-world approach to self-improvement.