Stephan Schmidt, CTO Coach - October 15, 2025
One Thing A Day For Happiness
Why does it feel like you achieve nothing?
TL;DR: Prioritize completing one significant, meaningful task each day rather than juggling multiple small tasks—this approach delivers a sense of tangible progress and accomplishment that prevents the "treadmill effect" of constant busyness without impact.
You should aim for one thing a day. Accomplish one thing, not more, not less.
One thing a day is not about productivity. One thing a day is about happiness; there are many productivity methods around, and if you are looking for a productivity method look into Pomodoro. One thing a day is not one of them.
What is one thing a day? One thing a day means that you should do one thing a day that is significant; one thing a day that brings you forward. One thing a day that changes you. One thing a day that changes things; one thing a day that makes the day different.
Too often people do a lot of things at once. When I was a manager, I was flooded with work. I did a lot of work each day, but I had the feeling I didn’t make any progress. I had the feeling that I did not make any impact.
When my wife and I got a new garden, there was a lot of work. There was standard gardening, and watering, and looking for flowers. We worked very hard but we did not seem to make any progress. Like on a treadmill.
One day we made an observation. On that day we felt very good. Why? We had made a whole flower bed from start to finish. The garden had changed. It wasn’t the same as before. That day was different. We had achieved something that day. We were happy.
The same goes for your work.
Set out one goal, one thing that might take some time, but when you finish it, you’ll have achieved something. Writing an article. Finish a book chapter. Start and finish that strategy deck. A refactoring. Something large that will take some hours to finish.
It feels different.
You will feel happy.
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About me: Hey, I'm Stephan, a CTO Coach with 40+ years of software development and 25+ years of engineering management experience. I've coached and mentored 80+ CTOs and founders. I've founded 3 startups. 1 nice exit. I help CTOs and engineering leaders grow, scale their teams, gain clarity, lead with confidence and navigate the challenges of fast-growing companies.
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