Warning: You already know what follows. This is only a friendly reminder.
It is worthwhile to remember that only you can decide the most important ingredients of your life. The building blocks of character, productivity, and performance are exclusively up to you and only you.
For instance, only you can choose your values. What is most important and matters most to you is not a group or relationship exercise. You alone get to decide the core set of values and principles that will guide your actions.
How did you do?
Similarly, no one else can decide your daily priorities. While you may sometimes have leaders direct your attention to given tasks and assignments, only you can decide which from the list of possibilities is the most urgent and important. As productivity expert David Allen likes to say, “You can do anything, but not everything.”
So, you must make a choice. Your priorities define your day. As Stephen Covey advises, you might want to schedule them. How is your daily schedule going?
To accomplish all that you desire, only you can decide the commitment you will make to the goals and people who make up your life. The tradeoffs are real and require you to make decisions as to how you will spend your time and resources.
As Oprah Winfrey is fond of saying, “You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.” Where you find the time to invest in your goals, your health, your team, your family, and the myriad of other critical matters is up to you. How you balance competing interests is your decision alone. No one else can make that call. Do you like the current state of your commitments?
At the end of the day, your life is a reflection of the decisions and choices only you can make. Whatever shape your life is in, it is the result of those decisions. When you really want different outcomes, you will make different decisions regarding the ingredients. Until then, and after then, it is up to you. How are you doing, so far?
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
