When you begin each new day, you are faced with two immediate choices:

1.  Wait and see what the day brings. Just roll with what happens, respond to things that come up or carry out tasks that were planned and assigned to you by someone else; or

2.  Decide what you’re going to accomplish and then go do that.  This is a conscious choice to focus your efforts, based upon priorities that you’ve set and which are aligned with your goals.

The consistency with which you do one of the other, or a mixture of both, will ultimately determine the progress you make in your life and your career.  The beauty of the second choice is that it provides a daily opportunity to look back and assess incremental progress. Some days are better than others, as the saying goes, but over time this practice of daily assessment will pay off.

It doesn’t matter what job you hold, or even if you hold one, to make the second choice. It does matter immensely, however, that what you choose to focus your efforts and energy on is worthwhile for you and those around you. This is an uniquely personal decision, one with huge implications for the direction of your life.

If that all sounds a bit too planned, too accountable or just too difficult, realize that following the “wait and see” approach is still a “choice”. It is a sort of decision by indecision. Just because you don’t actively plan the day doesn’t offer you relief from the implications of what happens. 

In a business context, it’s interesting to consider potential results when many people who work together take personal responsibility for their daily choices. Suddenly their enterprise becomes the “company of choice” for clients who are looking for something better than a random experience.

When the sun comes up tomorrow morning, what choice will you make?