Product Description

Most of us look at our days in the wrong way: We exaggerate yesterday. We overestimate tomorrow. We underestimate today. The truth is that the most important day you will ever experience is today. Today is the key to your success. Maxwell offers 12 decisions and disciplines-he calls it his daily dozen-that can be learned and mastered by any person to achieve success.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23611 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780446529587
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Booklist
Maxwell has written more than 30 books and has had a long career in public speaking, first as a pastor and then as a conference and seminar leader, helping people maximize their potential. He says that most of us spend far too much time exaggerating our past successes and failures and overestimating tomorrow, assuming things will get better without creating a strategy for making it better. That's why he says that today is the only day that really matters, for today determines the successes of tomorrow. It all boils down to making good decisions, but determining what decisions to make is not always easy, so Maxwell has narrowed down the critical areas of success to 12 of what he calls the "Daily Dozen." They include such things as maintaining a positive attitude, sticking to priorities, following healthy guidelines, investing in good relationships, and managing finances. He has a chapter devoted to each discipline, with a short worksheet at the end to encourage you and assist you in your personal daily growth. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Daily Disciplines to Keep You on the Path to Success
Can you expect to win a gold medal in the Olympics if you start preparing the day of the try outs for your country's team? Probably not.

In the same way, each of us needs to develop ourselves spiritually, psychologically, emotionally, physically, intellectually, and socially if we want to accomplish more in the future. Many books take one aspect of life and suggest daily activities to strengthen that part of one's life. Dr. John C. Maxwell has taken that important idea further in this book and suggested what you need to do each day in 12 different areas.

The 12 areas are:

Choose and display the right attitude

Determine and act on important priorities

Know and follow healthy guidelines

Communicate with and care for your family

Practice and develop good thinking

Make and keep proper commitments

Make and properly manage your money

Deepen and live out your spiritual faith

Initiate and invest in solid personal relationships

Plan for and model being generosity

Embrace and practice good values

Seek out and embrace personal improvements.

Each section comes with negative and positive examples so you understand the point Dr. Maxwell is trying to make. I often found the negative examples to be more instructive than the positive ones. I don't want to be like those people!

At the end of each section are a series of questions to help you make the decisions and take the actions you need to do to accomplish what you want to in life. So, you're not modeling on what Dr. Maxwell does specifically . . . but rather turning a spotlight into areas he's found to be valuable in his own, very successful life.

I often marvel at how much Dr. Maxwell accomplishes. He writes lots of books. He gives many speeches. He trains enormous numbers of leaders. He inspires millions more. For a long time, I've wondered what the discipline was like that he uses. Now that I have read this book, I know. And I'm very impressed. This is a level of self-discipline and focus that I had never considered before.

Mid-way through the book, I found myself becoming intimidated by all that needs to be done . . . and began to despair if I was up to the challenge. It was with a great sense of relief that I found this problem addressed in the conclusion to the book. Rather than attacking the whole Mount Everest of opportunity for daily self-discipline all at once, he suggests starting with two areas where you are doing well and one where you are not. Then, switch focus as you get one of the areas you have been working on where you want to get it. I think that's a reasonable plan, and only wish he had suggested that approach in the beginning of the book.

Personally, the book would have worked better for me if I had read it in this order: faith, values, attitude, thinking, growth, health, family, relationships, commitment, generosity, finances and priorities. I suspect that the right order for you will be different from either Dr. Maxwell's or mine. The book is modular enough that you can reorder your reading of the chapters after the first two to provide a focus that fits with the way you like to organize your thinking and actions. I encourage you to do so.

Although this book will make a tremendous difference in your life, it will make even more difference if you share and discuss it with those you love and care about. So be generous in sharing this remarkable volume.

Good Practical Material to Effect Change in the Reader
"Today Matters" may be the most effective and practical John Maxwell book for personal development to date. Taken together with his recent work "Thinking for a Change," this is a poignant manual for managing the decisions of life.

The central theme in "Today Matters" is making and then managing the core decisions that define who we are. He has done an excellent job of partitioning the major practical themes of life in to 12 major categories. You could probably add to the list if you really wanted to, but the set he offers are sufficient to capture 90+ percent of the essential themes in life. Personally, I was stricken by how important each of them is to determining the course our lives travel. In my own reflections while reading this book, I could see how my decisions, or indecision, in each of these areas has shaped my life.

This book is an excellent microscope for self-examination. But more than that, it is an excellent instruction guide to aide the reader in making these critical decisions. There are practical exercises that conclude each chapter that tie up each topic. Fortunately, Maxwell does not try to tell the reader what these decisions should be. Rather he leads the reader to pursue individual answers.

If a person were to implement the tools from "Thinking for a Change" with the process from "Today Matters" they would have a blueprint, irrespective of their personal or professional goals, for making the most of their lives. Maxwell presents universal concepts that will aid in the ultimate pursuit of a life well lived.

As an aside: I have read a lot of Maxwell, enjoy most of it, learned something from all of it. However, I find that his books have tended to overlap, sometimes a lot! For example, when I read "Developing the Leader Within You" there were times when I felt like I was re-reading "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership". His last two books seem to mark a decisive change for the better. I really enjoyed the way the two books dovetail together in a very complimentary fashion rather than overlapping and becoming redundant.

Kudos to Maxwell on continuing to improve his craft. This strikes me as someone who is living out the example he is teaching. That is "do as I do, not just as I say".

Every Moment Counts.
TODAY MATTERS is a fine book by John C. Maxwell, best-selling author of "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership." A noted expert in leadership and ethics, he has written an engaging blueprint to maximize our day, while developing lives of purpose and meaning.

Maxwell offers a holistic and spiritual focus, touching on the integration of body, mind and spirit. In his "12 Practices," he examines attitudes, priorities, health, family, thinking, commitment, finances, faith, relationship, generosity, values, and growth. I particularly enjoyed the reflections and exercises at the end of each chapter. The material is both timeless and fresh; often, the author presents what we already knew, but need to remember.

I have embraced many of Maxwell's suggestions. In doing so, I have improved myself concerning organization, persistence and determination, while achieving a greater sense of inner peace. The structure of the book allows for both thorough reading as well as selective exploration of those areas in which the reader recognizes the need for improvement.