Today Matters

**Author:** John C. Maxwell **Estimated Reading Time:** 45 minutes

How to transform your daily habits into a life of purpose, achievement, and fulfillment by mastering twelve essential areas of personal growth. You will discover why today is the most important day of your life and how to make decisions that compound into extraordinary results.

Anyone who feels stuck in the gap between where they are and where they want to be. If you have big dreams but struggle with daily follow-through, if you find yourself waiting for the perfect moment, or if you simply want to make each day count, this book is for you.

Most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year and underestimate what they can accomplish in a decade. But John Maxwell takes this insight one step further: most people also overestimate yesterday and tomorrow while dramatically underestimating today. Think about how often you have said, "Tomorrow I will start." Tomorrow I will exercise. Tomorrow I will call my parents. Tomorrow I will begin that project. Tomorrow I will save money. Tomorrow I will apologize. And then tomorrow arrives, and it looks remarkably like yesterday. This is the quiet tragedy of modern life. We are not defeated by catastrophic failures. We are defeated by the accumulation of ordinary days spent waiting for a future that never arrives. We postpone our lives one day at a time, never realizing that our lives are actually made of those very days we keep postponing. Maxwell wrote *Today Matters* to address this fundamental disconnect. After decades of studying successful people across industries, he noticed a pattern that transcended talent, education, and circumstance. Successful people did not necessarily work harder than everyone else. They did not necessarily know more. But they shared one common trait: they made important decisions early in life and then managed those decisions daily. The problem for most people is not a lack of desire. You already want to be healthier, more disciplined, more generous, more focused. The problem is that wanting is passive. Wanting requires nothing from you. The gap between wanting and becoming is bridged by daily decisions, repeated consistently over time. Consider the mathematics of daily choices. If you improve just one percent each day, you do not improve by 365 percent in a year. You improve by roughly 3,700 percent, because improvements compound. The same is true in reverse. Small daily neglect compounds into significant decline. The direction of your life is determined not by dramatic moments but by ordinary days. Maxwell's approach is distinctive because he does not offer a complicated system. He offers twelve daily practices, each corresponding to a major area of life. These practices are not revolutionary. You…