Make Today Count
The Secret of Your Success Is Determined by Your Daily Agenda
Book Edition Details
Summary
What if the secret to transforming your life lies in the small, deliberate choices you make each day? "Make Today Count" by John C. Maxwell is your guide to turning the mundane into the magnificent. Through twelve foundational principles—each a powerful catalyst for change—Maxwell distills the art of daily success into easily digestible lessons. Whether it's refining your priorities, nurturing relationships, or honing personal values, this book offers a pragmatic roadmap to unlocking your potential. Designed for quick reading or thoughtful contemplation, these insights promise not just personal growth, but a shift towards a more intentional, fulfilling existence. Embrace each day as an opportunity for profound impact, one decision at a time.
Introduction
What if I told you that spending just one day with you would reveal whether you're destined for success or failure? It might sound bold, even presumptuous, but here's the truth: your daily agenda holds the secret to your entire future. Every morning you wake up, you're not just starting another day—you're crafting the foundation for everything you'll become. The mundane choices you make between sunrise and sunset, the habits you nurture when no one's watching, the small disciplines you either embrace or abandon—these seemingly insignificant moments are actually the building blocks of an extraordinary life. Success isn't a sudden event that happens to lucky people; it's the inevitable result of intentional daily decisions compounded over time. The question isn't whether today matters, but whether you're ready to harness its transformative power.
The Foundation: Core Decisions That Define Success
Understanding the architecture of success begins with recognizing that life operates on a simple yet profound principle: decisions determine direction, and direction determines destination. Think of your life as a sculptor approaching a block of marble. The average person sees only stone, but a master craftsman envisions the masterpiece waiting within and makes deliberate choices about what to create. Consider the story of a seventeen-year-old basketball player who discovered this truth when his coach pulled him aside before senior season. Despite not being the most talented player on the team, he was chosen as captain because of one quality that set him apart from his more skilled teammates: his attitude. This moment became a revelation that would shape his entire approach to life. He realized that while he couldn't control his height, his background, or his natural athletic ability, he could absolutely control his attitude and its influence on others. This awakening led to a life-changing decision: he would choose and display the right attitude daily, using it as a tool to positively impact everyone around him. From that moment forward, his consistent positive attitude opened doors that talent alone never could have. Teachers praised him, opportunities multiplied, and leadership roles naturally gravitated toward him. The decision to master his attitude became the foundation for every other success that followed. The power lies in identifying twelve critical decision areas that, when mastered, create an unstoppable momentum toward your highest potential. These decisions about attitude, priorities, health, family, thinking, commitment, finances, faith, relationships, generosity, values, and growth become your daily dozen—the non-negotiables that separate those who drift through life from those who deliberately design it. When you settle these twelve issues with clear decisions and manage them with unwavering discipline, you create a blueprint for sustainable success that transcends circumstances and setbacks.
Daily Disciplines: Transforming Decisions Into Consistent Action
Making good decisions represents only half the equation for transforming your life; the other half lies in developing the daily disciplines that bring those decisions to life. Without discipline, even the best intentions become nothing more than wishful thinking. With discipline, ordinary decisions become extraordinary results over time. The story of a man who learned this lesson the hard way illustrates this perfectly. At fifty-one, he was living a high-energy, fast-paced lifestyle, leading multiple organizations while maintaining a demanding travel schedule. He had always been healthy as a horse, never missing a single speaking engagement due to illness in thirty years. His natural energy seemed inexhaustible, so he took his health completely for granted—rarely exercising, eating poorly, and carrying extra weight. Then came December 18, 1998, during his company's annual Christmas party. Without warning, excruciating chest pain brought him to his knees. As he lay waiting for paramedics, feeling like an elephant was sitting on his chest, he faced the stark reality that his years of neglecting his health had finally caught up with him. In the emergency room, doctors worked frantically to save his life, and it was only through a recently developed procedure and the intervention of skilled cardiologists that he survived what could have been fatal. This life-threatening experience transformed his understanding of discipline. His doctor explained that surviving the heart attack was just the beginning—his future health would depend entirely on his willingness to change how he lived and stick with it. The doctor warned that 85 percent of heart patients quit their healthy regimen within six months. Faced with this sobering statistic, he made a commitment that would define the rest of his life: every day he would eat low-fat foods and exercise for at least thirty-five minutes. The key to managing any discipline successfully is creating a specific, measurable daily practice that keeps you accountable. In the case of health, this meant treating exercise and proper nutrition not as suggestions but as non-negotiable appointments with himself. By focusing on what he could control each day rather than being overwhelmed by long-term goals, he created sustainable change that eventually became second nature.
Building Your Personal Success System
Creating lasting change requires more than good intentions and sporadic effort; it demands a systematic approach that makes success inevitable rather than accidental. Your personal success system acts as a framework that supports your growth even when motivation wanes or circumstances challenge your resolve. The foundation of any effective system lies in understanding that you must put your family on your calendar first, not last. One successful leader discovered this principle when he noticed a disturbing trend among his colleagues and friends—marriages that had seemed strong were falling apart at an alarming rate. Despite his own career taking off, he realized that outward success meant nothing if it came at the expense of his most important relationships. This realization prompted him to rewrite his definition of success entirely: success meant having those closest to him love and respect him the most. This single decision revolutionized how he approached his daily schedule. Instead of giving his family whatever time and energy remained after work, he began blocking out weeks for family vacations, scheduling regular dates with his wife, and protecting time for important family events. The transformation wasn't immediate, but it was profound. By creating boundaries around his family time and treating these commitments as seriously as any business meeting, he discovered that his relationships actually strengthened his professional effectiveness rather than hindering it. His children grew up knowing they were a priority, his marriage deepened through intentional investment, and the stability of his family life provided a foundation that supported every other area of his success. Building your personal success system means identifying your non-negotiables in each area of life and creating specific structures that protect them. This might involve setting up automatic investments for your financial goals, establishing a morning routine that includes thinking time, or scheduling monthly appointments with mentors who challenge your growth. The system works because it removes the daily decision fatigue of constantly choosing between what's urgent and what's important.
Creating Your Daily Dozen for Life Mastery
The culmination of intentional living comes when you integrate all twelve critical decision areas into a seamless daily practice that moves you steadily toward your highest potential. Your Daily Dozen becomes the GPS system for your life, providing clear direction when circumstances become confusing and maintaining momentum when motivation fluctuates. The power of this approach was demonstrated by a young man who, at twenty-seven, had his paradigm shifted by a simple question from a mentor: "What is your plan for personal growth?" After stumbling through an inadequate answer about how hard he worked, he was confronted with a life-changing truth: growth is not an automatic process. That night, he and his wife made a decision that would transform their future—they would develop and follow a personal growth plan together, even though it meant sacrificing for six months to afford the necessary resources. This commitment to intentional growth became the catalyst for extraordinary change. By spending one hour a day, five days a week studying leadership, he developed expertise that revolutionized his effectiveness. He began reading two books monthly, scheduling regular meetings with successful people, and filing every valuable insight for future application. The compound effect of this daily discipline created opportunities and capabilities he could never have imagined. The beauty of the Daily Dozen approach lies in its cumulative power. When you make the right decision about your attitude and manage it daily, you create positive momentum. When you add proper priorities, your effectiveness multiplies. Layer on good health practices, strong family relationships, and intentional thinking, and the synergy becomes exponential. Each area supports and strengthens the others, creating a life of unprecedented fulfillment and impact. Your Daily Dozen doesn't have to be overwhelming. Start with one decision area each month, focusing on making the right choice and developing the corresponding discipline. By year's end, you'll have created a comprehensive life system that operates almost automatically, freeing your mental energy for creativity and contribution while ensuring that every area of your life moves in the direction of your dreams.
Summary
The transformation of your entire life hinges on a profound yet simple truth: you will never change your life until you change something you do daily. Every day of your existence is preparation for the next, and what you become tomorrow is the direct result of what you choose today. The secret lies not in waiting for perfect conditions or extraordinary opportunities, but in making the critical decisions that matter most and then managing those decisions with unwavering daily discipline. When you settle the twelve key areas of life through clear decisions and consistent action, you create a masterpiece from the raw material of ordinary days. The time to begin is now—choose your twelve decisions, develop your daily disciplines, and watch as today's small choices become tomorrow's extraordinary results. Your future self is counting on the decisions you make today.
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By John C. Maxwell
