Life only moves in one direction. Even if we choose to do nothing differently tomorrow, the hands of time keep counting. It is always a choice.

Therefore it is far more productive to choose what we will do with the next day we have been gifted, living forward, because there is no going back. Time spent longing for the past is essentially wasted and unrecoverable.

We can learn from the past but we cannot live there.

Sometimes we are prompted to “turn the page”, most notably at the New Year. This has become the magical date where life supposedly resets for the next run, according to the relentless social media reminders that surround us. And so, we celebrate the event; although we might not seriously consider what we will start doing, stop doing or do differently in the New Year. When we do, they are called “New Year’s Resolutions”!

I shared thoughts around this 10 New Years ago in this space when I invited readers to “Consider your life as a book with you as the author” and to proactively use that perspective to Turn the Page; I can now look back and see how that approach ultimately manifested in my own life through the physical book I wrote titled Leadership Worthy – How Leaders Are Made.

On this particular New Year, I am pondering how living forward looks in the chapters ahead. I find this to be a much more practical — and infinitely more effective — approach than only thinking about it annually. Whether it’s the beginning of a year, a quarter, a project, or a big initiative, progress begins with clear focus, matched with the discipline to stick with it and coupled with daily action to move forward. Productive change is an ongoing, not an annual, process.

Small yet persistent changes, made daily, have the potential to produce cumulative and massive impact over time. How will you approach living forward in 2025?

Tempus Maximize!