Today was not the day I planned.

You ever have one of those days where your calendar might as well have been written in disappearing ink?

The reality of running a construction business is that your schedule will get hijacked, but you've got to keep moving forward anyway.

If you don’t build flexibility into your plans, your plans will break.

Learn how to shift gears without losing direction.

Ever feel like journaling is just another thing on a never-ending to-do list? You’re not alone.

Most people never stick with it and I used to be one of them. But after a life-altering accident in 2012, everything changed.

In this episode, I’m sharing why journaling became a daily habit, how it helped me get clear on my purpose, and why it’s one of the most powerful tools I use to stay focused and build a better life and business.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, scattered, or just worn out by the chaos—this might be exactly what you need.

Journaling. What does it really mean to journal?

It’s a question I’ve been asking myself a lot lately. I journal three times a day and I’ve been doing this consistently for a little over twelve years.

But why?

Before then, I had made a few weak attempts at journaling. But to no avail. There were always other things that I needed to do, keeping me from making it a habit.

Then something changed.

We tend to be binary thinkers. We assume things have to be one way or the other, ignoring the nuances and complexities of life. But that kind of thinking doesn’t work well in balancing your life.

So how do we find that balance?

Sure, sometimes there are only two choices. When choosing between right and wrong or good and evil, I believe this is the case. But most of life? It’s lived in the middle. And if we only see two options, we’ll stop trying to find balance altogether.

Everything in life comes down to decisions. The decisions we make affect the outcome. 

This past Sunday morning I was running behind schedule due to decisions I made Saturday evening, which were the results of something that happened Friday evening. I can’t go back and change the past, so this gives me a fixed time to get things done.

How do I decide what to do and what not to do?

It is easy to get consumed by all the things that need to be done. But we have more control over this than we think. It’s like BUILDing anything, it comes down to Being aware, Understanding, taking Intentional action and continued Learning.

How are we supposed to get everything done?

It’s amazing how much can be accomplished when there’s a deadline.

Nothing gets done without taking action. But when there are so many big, scary things ahead of us, it can be hard to get started. Overwhelm can slam the brakes on progress. We get stuck in neutral, and nothing moves forward.

Nothing will get done if you don’t do something.

This is where we are going to focus today. And to show you how this works, I’m going to use a real example of a current remodeling project I’m working on.

A friend and I were recently discussing the sense of overwhelm and out-of-control feeling that we were both experiencing. There are so many worthwhile, valuable things pulling at our attention. How will I ever get them all done?

My to-do list is so long there’s not enough time to read it…let alone do it.

Nothing gets done if you don’t do something.

A construction project is a big thing made up of a lot of different smaller things. Things need to be done in the right order, or the project will fall apart, or won’t be what it was intended to be.

Building a business is no different. The question is…

How do you manage all the little things?

We’ve been talking a lot about routines over the past several weeks. Like most things, it sounds great, but where to start? There’s already too much to do and not enough time. There’s no room on the list to add anything else.

No one ever said building a successful business would be easy. If they did … they lied.

Operating a business requires a lot. With so much to do, it’s common to get overwhelmed. My intent with today’s post is to help you manage that stress.