The Most Important Decision

What’s the most important decision you’ll make today?

In this episode of Habit Masters, we unpack a powerful idea sparked by a short Seth Godin blog post: “What should I do next?” We explore how our small, daily decisions—many of which we barely think about—are actually shaping our entire lives.

We'll also give you a few tips to help you work through how to simplify this big idea into something you can take action on right now—without feeling overwhelmed.

The big takeaway? Tiny, intentional choices made consistently will define who you become and the life you create. One decision at a time.

ACTION STEP FROM THIS EPISODE
Start your day by writing down one thing you want to intentionally focus on. At the end of the day, reflect on how it went—even just a sentence.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

00:52 – Seth Godin’s “What Should I Do Next?”
02:03 – The Weight of Tiny Decisions
04:38 – How to Avoid Overwhelm
07:49 – Simplifying Intentional Living
08:31 – One Thing: A Simple Daily Practice
12:05 – Strategic Laziness: Doing Less, Better
15:47 – Reclaiming Focus and Energy
17:22 – Final Encouragement and Real-Life Story

WE’D LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU!
Got thoughts, questions, or insights about this episode? Email us at hello@habitmasters.com
—we’d genuinely love to hear what stood out to you.

OUR MISSION
To help one million strivers take consistent action on their goals and live a life of greater freedom and contribution.

P.S. If this episode hit home, share it with a friend who could use it.

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome back to Habit Masters, you guys. It's our second episode back. We're actually doing it. And we're super excited to share some ideas that we've been kicking around that we feel like can be helpful. Yeah. Kicks off Jeff. We are, as a Seth Godin, that's sparked one that we just wanna talk about. Yes. So this is what sparked the idea for today. And, if you've listened to us at all, you know that we love Seth Godin. He's got some awesome blog posts and they're really short and awesome to read, so go check him out. It's just Seth blog, seth's blog.com, if I can say that word. Seth's blog.com. There you go. He's done a blog post every day for 20 something years. Yeah, that's awesome. And it's a great example of. Don't try to overdo it. Right. Some of them are a paragraph, some of them are sentenced, some of them are a page. It's like very doable. Yeah. And, but that habit is so key. Putting your thoughts down on paper. It's akin to me to journaling and I've actually, for a long time I didn't miss a day, but like the last couple years I'm kind of hit or miss. I've, I've still been journaling, but not as much as I. Would like, and I definitely notice a difference when I put my thoughts down on paper. And even though I don't go back and review those necessarily, it just solidifies it in my brain a little more. Yeah. Anyway, I don't know. But here's, here's the blog. You ready? Okay. The most important decision is what it's called. And it says, what should I do next, not next year or for the rest of my life right now, the apparently trivial choice, whether or not to open an email, make a phone call, or stand up to stretch the endless list of options. Some not even consciously considered that we work through or thousand times a day, sum them up and these millions of tiny decisions become the life we've chosen. One next at a time. And it was like when I read this, oh, it was just impactful and I felt like, so today's episode is all about the most important decision, or in other words, what should I do next? Yeah, that's like hard to beat up. The most important decision I make is my next decision, right? We've talked about this before. It's like whatever, whatever we are focusing on and giving our time and attention and you know, what we do next is the most important thing to us at this moment. All the infinite possibilities in the world. Things we could do, say, think about whatever we choose to. Fixate on next is the one we've decided is most important. I mean, that, that feels like a heavy burden if I'm honest. Yeah. But I think it needs to be, that's just part of life. It's kind of like saying this is reality. You know what I mean? Yeah. Things to our mind, stuff we interrupted and whatnot, but I think. We all have choices throughout the day where we can decide, okay, this is important enough to continue onward, or there's other things that are more important to me. Mm-hmm. Spiritual, mental, familial, you know, relation with your job, anything. You know what I mean? It's I think if we had this framework of is this. Is this really the most important thing I could be doing right now? Again, that sounds almost too heavy to me to Well, and this is one of those I, this is one of, oh, sorry. Go ahead. No, no, no. Keep, keep going. Catching up. I said this is one of those ideas for me that can be stress. It can be like. Okay. This gives me anxiety and I don't wanna think about it anymore. Yeah. And so you just don't, or it's one of those ideas that you, you really get to the root of what it means, and it's not so much that you have to make the right choice every second, every day. Right? Right. And that you have to be thinking about every choice you make. I think it's more, if you were looked to look at it from a more long-term perspective, it's about where are you headed and what mm-hmm. Is your trajectory. It's like being intentional in your life. And that's what he is really saying is. Rather than letting life happen to you, you're choosing the life you want. Right? It's oh, okay. And, and you're right. If you really were to boil it down to okay, what am I gonna do next? What am I gonna do? Then be thinking that through the most important thing I could do right now. Right? Yeah. And it, and initially maybe there is some of that that happens when you, when you start to live more intentionally, because you do have to be monitoring a little bit.'cause we, we have a tendency to fall back into old habits or old routines or old patterns, right. Of thinking and doing. And so maybe for a minute it's kind of like learning. Anytime you learn something new, it takes a lot more brainpower Initially, like when you start driving or when you start playing sports or when you start learning how to write or use a computer software program or a new app, it's it takes a lot of mental power initially, but then over time. It starts to become routine and it starts to become normal and standard and you're, and you get the, the mechanics of it down. And so I think that's part of it is maybe initially it is okay, I'm gonna remind myself of this every hour. It's okay, was I, how intentional was I in my, in my actions? And then, you know, maybe that's too much too, I don't know. It's well, you talked about journal, I think even. Once a day for most of us is probably like that, that looking back and saying, Hey, what, what, what would I have done differently? Or what went well? And you know what I mean, with gratitude and graciousness because we all make mistakes and we never are always making the right decisions, obviously. Yes, right. But. Yeah. I think that's why you, you wrote journaling and I don't know how many times I've had this, this I'm going to be better at that. But you said it again and it, it struck me right then. No, I, I want this. Yeah. So critical to growth and to, and to seeing at a. A friend who said his Jo, his daughter, journaled every day at like her entire youth onward and had like dozens of journals, right? Yeah. And he said he, he said he thought the, one of the outcomes or the products of this ability, or this, this journaling, was that when she decided to change something, like mentally change something, she had the ability to do it like almost instantly. It could just like, I don't know, you know, the self-awareness or, or I don't know what it is. Do you know what I mean? I don't, maybe we don't have the right words to describe that type level of like introspection and, and mindfulness, but like literally he's she had more ability. Anybody I've ever known to, just once she made a decision. It was changed and he, he contributed that mainly to this, the, you know, this journaling and this like recording and, and review and, and I was like, that's about, I want, I wanna be more like that. Well, and anything comes down to that as like willpower, right? And so it journaling's one aspect of it, but maybe it's almost anything you do that you're intentionally choosing to do that isn't necessarily automatic. It's and, and there's probably some that relate more to what you're saying, like journaling probably 'cause that intro, that self-reflection and introspection and kind of looking at life from through a magnifying glass to some extent. So maybe how do we simplify this? Because I think that's been one of the things that we do on this show pretty well is take somewhat of a complex or seemingly stressful idea. Yeah. Stressful, maybe that's not the word, but word? Kind of how do I turn this into action? Yes. That's always been one of our ideals, right? Is how do we, how do we take a principle that seems overwhelming and turn it into simple actionable steps? And I, one thing comes to mind for me right now, okay? And it is that what if you just wrote down in the morning, like one thing. Okay. As far as okay, today, and it can be one sentence, it's it's almost like journaling the start of your day and journaling the end of your day. It's here's my biggest goal for today. Boom. Whatever that is, right? I wanna do this thing. If I get this one thing done, I. I can consider it like, yes, I, I, I wasn't very intentional about my day. Right. Yeah. And there's obviously more than one thing, but I think if you just start with one, let's just try to do one thing intentionally today, and then at the end of the day you just say, here's what happened. Right. It's da dah, and it can be a sentence, it can be a paragraph, it could be a whole page if you want, but I think it in, in some ways, that's where you start with something like this is instead of trying to make a decision every hour, da, da, da or try to, you know, anytime you transition a task, it's starting with, I start the day by saying, here's my main focus of the day. And then at the end of the day, you just kind of review. How'd it go? Yeah. What do you think of that? I love it. I ultimately, it's beginning with the end in mind, right? Yes. It's figuring out those, it's skittles and oranges. It's figuring out what your oranges are. We all know the parable, right? It's try and fill a jar with Skittles and you. The oranges, but if you fit the oranges in first, you can actually fit most of the Skittles. Yes. I think if it's just like, our decisions are a sign of what's most important to us in the moment, and then we owe it to ourselves to give ourselves a sign of, of those things those priorities, wherever we want to move those goals, those bigger goals mm-hmm. We, we owe it to our future self and it's a gift to ourself to, to do something. To move toward that. It doesn't have to be big. We, we should, I think we should do an episode on this idea of anything above zero compounds, right? Yeah, absolutely. That's a great idea. Yeah. It doesn't have to be a lot, but if you do something moving toward these, these goals in which you want every single day, like it compounds over time. Right? Anything above zero is progress. Absolutely. Well, and and anything above zero is intentional, right? So it's yeah. We're choosing regardless, but are we choosing intentionally or are we kind of letting life choose for us? You know, are we letting the seeds get blown into our garden or are we deciding this is what I wanna plant, this is what I wanna water. Yeah. Every time we talk about the garden, I'm like, okay, we need to write this book. But like everything in life, that seems like a very daunting task when you think about it as a whole book form. Right. But if you consider the body of work of this, even at this podcast, even though we've missed a year, right? We actually had four years of podcasts. Like that's, that's what writing a book is. It's okay. Write a, write a little bit each week, write a little bit each day, right? And eventually you have a book. So we gotta remind ourselves of that. Okay. Today, right now, because this is the morning I am going to yet again, and it's funny how many it's, I, we've done this so many times that I always need reminders yet again, gonna pull out my little sticky notes. So it's temporary, it's simple, it's small. Mm-hmm. And I'm gonna pick one, two, maybe three at most things that are like, all right, these. Things. No, I'm gonna make 'em simple so they're not huge. These, these, these two things I want to do today that if I don't intentionally put it on my list and focus and make sure I do that, it probably wouldn't happen. But I want it to be, do you wanna share what they are or are you gonna keep it a secret? Ah. Or have you not decided yet? Well, I haven't decided yet. Oh, I have. That's things in my mind, but I wanna simplify it and I, and then again, to make this simple, it's gonna take me like two minutes, but I don't wanna do that on the air. That's fair. Everybody listen for two minutes. No. Mm-hmm. But I think the other part of this that I was just thinking about and something that I learned from John Acuff back in the day. Is these don't have to be like, I think sometimes we think of goals as like it's only specific to work or fitness or some of, and those are great goals, right? But I think they can be simpler and even more important than that. Mm-hmm. Which relate back to more of who you're becoming as a father. As a husband, as a friend, right, as a disciple of Christ, as whatever it is you're aiming towards, and, and then look at that and say, okay, I. And maybe, you know, maybe this makes it more complicated or less, you know, you can decide that, sorry if this makes it more complicated but is for me, I was just thinking about it in this in terms of, okay, how do I decide what that one thing is? Well, I think you just look at it and say, well, who am I trying to become? And then just pick one of those categories okay the person that I, I'm trying to be, I'm trying to be a great husband. Okay, well. Today, I, my goal is to, and a great father, so I'm gonna intentionally express love to my wife, right? Whatever in, in a, maybe a more meaningful or more intentional way than I've done in the past, or I. I'm going to compliment and give my kids a hug or whatever, or, say their actual name and ask them something specific about their day rather than just like, how's it going? I dunno. You know what I mean? I'm like, it can be something as simple as that. I think we try, try, tend to overcomplicate things and maybe it's more just. You know, building that connection Anyway, see, go ahead. It's like we've over complicated talking about this. Probably we, we always do. Okay, but now you guys know what the mental process is of trying to work through this stuff and turn it into reality in your life. It's okay, gotta go through some of this. Or human sites are, I guarantee anybody who is patient and generous enough to listen to this has an idea. What they wanna do and how they wanna do it. I dunno. So just run with it. Make it simple. I'm not gonna tell you what to do.. I'm sure you've got something in mind. Run with it. You've got this. Absolutely. That's a good idea. Just what's that thing you've been, that's been nagging at you? Start, start doing that all. She, what else do you wanna say about this? Are you feeling, wait, there was a Greg McKeen that you had mentioned and we got about four or five minutes left to talk about four or five minutes. I would've to find it real quick. Lemme find it. I guess I, my intention with that whole portion of this was really to say that. You don't have to put qualifiers on this. It can be anything or anything you want, just like Sheldon was saying, anything you feel the need to do. Okay. I found it. Maybe we can end with this. Okay. Okay. Greg McEwen, he is another person that we follow. What's, what's the book? His most famous book, he's got a couple Effortless Is one Effortless. Yeah. Remember the other one that I read? Essentialism. Essentialism. That's the one that is the most popular. Yeah. And it is this Be lazy on purpose. Right? And he says that the most effective people are lazy, and he puts that down in quotes about things that don't matter, right? Again, we get to choose what we focus on. High achievers are taught to care about everything, to do it all, to push harder, but often the real breakthrough comes from doing less strategically. Right? Elite performers don't pour energy into every task. They underperform on purpose in areas that don't move the needle. I. They ignore, eliminate, automate, where others obsess about this stuff. Not because they're careless, because they're clear of where they want to go. And so he says that strategic laziness is a form of discipline. I really like that.'cause it's like you're not being lazy. You're being disciplined on the things that matter most. It's how reclaim your energy from the trivial and reallocate it to what actually moves you forward. I love that. Pick one task today. You're doing well. That doesn't deserve your best. Stop doing it, delegate it. Do it with 80% effort and reinvest the energy and the things that really count. That's super good advice, and if you are to relate it back to a lot of super high achievers. In life and be it athletes, be it whatever realm they're in is they're almost all hyper-focused on. Those things where they contribute the most. And darren Hardy talks about this all the time of when he interviews all these successful people. They're very specific about, these are, this is the part I play, right? It's like a pitcher, pitches or a speaker's, you know, the main guy, he's not gonna do everything. He's just gonna write the speeches and speak, you know, as part of his team or write the book, right? The writer writes like, I think it goes back to that is. And the other things as much as possible, delegate. Eliminate and automate. Yeah. Okay. This is kind of ironic. Sometimes when there's like a saying or something that I really like, I'll actually make a, like a background and I have it rotating through like pictures of my family and things like that, and the quotes that I really like that I want to come back to again. Right. Yeah. The one that, that, that popped up that's on the back of it right now, it says you always have time for the things you put first. What do you have time for today? So we'll ahead. And again, that can be used as a, as a milestone, right? Satan would, has a, use that as like this stick to beat ourselves with. But I think what I, you know, how I really wanna look at it is so it's just a reframing of, you know, what's most important to me. Well, if it's really important to me, then yeah, I've got time for it. I've got time for my wife, for my children. For my health. Yes. I love it. Okay, Jeff, I think that's a great spot. Wrap us up. Okay. Well, , I was just thinking that, and leads me back to, you know, I think it all ties back into what we've been talking about with the gratitude, generosity, and graciousness, right? It's . Am I showing gratitude? Am I being generous? Am I being gracious in all the things that I do? And if you are, I think you know, there's nothing better than that. Living intentionally is all about making the most of your day. As far as. The things that you do so that you can serve better or so that you can, you know, serve your family, serve the friends, serve the people contribute at a high level. So, okay, I'm gonna put it out publicly right now. Jeff, and I think maybe you'll agree with me 'cause we already talked about this a little bit. The next two episodes we're gonna talk about two things. One is this idea of anything above zero compounds, right? I love it. Every effort. Consistently given moves you forward more than you realize. And the second one is what Jeff just touched upon is gratitude and graciousness and generosity. We, we talked a lot about this and wrote some good things down and how that is the key to being happy and successful. Like you'll never be happier than you are. Grateful. Okay, we'll save it for next time. So now you guys have to cliffhanger. Okay. Thanks for listening. As always, we hope you enjoyed this episode. Catch up. Love you guys. Yes, bye.