My friend Tom has been the successful CEO of two start-ups. Since he “retired” from the last one, he’s been putting his excellent cooking skills to work at a soup kitchen, while he looks for his next interesting thing. That’s probably the way you’d like to be at the same career stage: fully engaged and relishing life and its challenges.

It’s possible. In fact, it’s pretty easy, but you have to start now. It doesn’t take much to stay interested, motivated, and growing.

Think about what you want to do better

Begin your day with a few minutes of thinking about what you will be doing and how you want to act. It’s all about behavior: what you say and what you do. A little thinking in the morning will help you do better during the day. Write notes to yourself if it helps.

Review and critique your activities

After a meeting or coaching session or any other event in your day, take a couple of moments to review. How did you do? What do you want to do differently next time?

The palest ink

You don’t necessarily need to write detailed notes. For most people a few key words will do the trick. Write them down on an index card or pocket notebook, but write them down. You want to capture impressions when they’re fresh.

Reflect

Take some time in the evening to capture your thoughts in a journal of some kind. Take some time over the weekend to reflect on your behavior during the prior week and think about how you want to act next week.

Bonus

If you help team members do this, they will get better and so will the team. And you’ll be demonstrating that you care about their development.

Boss’s Bottom Line

Ten years from now you can have ten years of experience, or one year’s experience repeated ten times. You choose.