As someone once pointed out to me, we live in an “AND” world and not an “OR” world.  Be it non-work or work related, each of us struggles on a daily basis to balance the “AND’s” of this world:  Spouses, children, religion, family, AND hobbies.  Quality AND productivity.  Favorite food AND losing weight.  The lists are incomplete; but, hopefully, they illustrate the point:  there’s a lot to do and some things just can’t be “traded off”.

The key here is to MAKE the trade offs where you have the choice so that you CAN accomplish the ANDs.

All too often we simply let things happen and then wonder WHAT happened!  What would happen if you made a conscious decision on WHAT you was going to happen today?  What if you committed to getting up at 5AM AND exercise AND read for 30 minutes AND eat breakfast with the kids AND then go to work?  Replace the AND’s with OR’s and the sentence and the day doesn’t start nearly as well.  The difference here is two choices.  First, the choice on WHAT you will accomplish (the list of things above) and the second is the HOW (getting to bed a bit earlier to arise a bit earlier).  If you decide on the WHAT and the HOW, the “AND” suddenly becomes achievable.  The question you need to answer is: “How will I make the right trade offs so that sure that I talk about ‘AND’ versus ‘OR’ at the end of the day?”

As always, thanks for the time.