Cheesecake and your day

Have you ever tried to decide what to eat at The Cheesecake Factory?

You open the menu hungry and ready to order. Twenty minutes later, you’re considering six different meals, wondering if you should just skip to dessert, and questioning every decision that brought you to this moment.

Okay, that last part might be an exaggeration. But the indecision is real.

Not because choosing dinner is especially difficult. There are simply too many options competing for the same decision.

The problem is that most of us begin every day staring at our own version of that menu.

Your inbox is calling. Your calendar is full. People need something from you. There are problems to solve, opportunities to pursue, responsibilities to meet, and things you’re worried you might forget.

Everything is on the menu. Everything is asking to be chosen. And before long, the day is deciding for you.

Most people try to fix that by getting more organized, working faster, or pushing themselves harder. But those approaches still begin with everything on the menu.

My new book, The Decided Day, coming August 15, introduces a completely different way to approach your day.

It isn’t a productivity system for doing more. It is a three-minute daily practice for taking ownership of your day before your inbox, calendar, circumstances, and old patterns take ownership of you.

You begin by making three decisions:

Who will I be today.
What matters most.
What will I do today.

Those decisions don’t eliminate everything you need to handle. They decide what leads.

They stop every demand from having an equal claim on your attention. They also give you a clear way to return to what matters when the day inevitably pulls you away.

You may not need a smaller menu. You need to decide what you’re ordering.

And you may not need a less demanding day.

You may need a decided one.