“Growth doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of intentional effort and consistent progress. You must define how you want to grow, then establish a plan to help you get there.”

- From Die Empty by Todd Henry

“The power of a plan is not that it will get you there. The power of a plan is that it will get you started. It’s easy to assume that you need to put together the plan that will get you there—in other words, the right plan. The plan that will work. No. The point is not to come up with the brilliant blueprint that is guaranteed to take you all the way to the finish line. The point is simply to come up with a plan that will get you out of the starting gate. It’s not even that your starting plan doesn’t necessarily get you there—it for sure won’t get you there, at least not the exact plan you conceive at first. Nobody has that degree of perfect precision in long-range planning, and there are too many variables and surprises along the way that will require adjustments to the plan. You have to start with a plan, but the plan you start with will not be the plan that gets you there.“

- From The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson

“The good thing about principles is that they make life easy. I have heard it said that when someone bases his life on principle, 99 percent of his decisions are already made.”

- From The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey

"Ending your day with planning sets you up for a purposeful and productive tomorrow."

- From High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way by Brendon Burchard

“Your success starts in the morning. Plan your day. Get up early. Work on your number one priority in life before anything else. Add more structure to your day and you will have more freedom in your life for your family, friends, and hobbies.”

- From The Perfect Day Formula by Craig Ballantyne

“Here’s the key formula for success: a few disciplines practiced every day. Those disciplines have to be well-thought out. What should you spend your time doing? You don’t want to waste your time on things that aren’t going to matter. But a few simple disciplines can change your whole economic future. A few simple disciplines can change your future with your family, your business, your enterprise, your career. Success is a few simple habits—good habits—repeated every day…Here’s the formula for failure: errors in judgment repeated every day. All you’ve got to do is have a few errors in your judgment and repeat them every day, and I’m telling you, they’ll spin out of control in ten years.”

- Jim Rohn

“Imagine the following:

You buy a ticket to an NBA game… let’s say a Lakers game at Staples Center.

You fight traffic, land a $40 parking spot, grab some snacks and drinks, and finally get to your seat.

The game starts, and you look up in the rafters, and the scoreboard is… missing!

There’s nothing there.

The players are dribbling, passing and shooting, but no one’s keeping score. After some arbitrary amount of time, they decide to stop playing, and everyone goes home.

Tell me…

Would that be the same experience as attending a game where the teams are battling for every important point as the clock counts down to the final buzzer?

No, of course not! If you take away the scoreboard and the clock, all the drama, tension, urgency, and excitement vanishes as well.

So here’s my question to you: Are you playing your game with or without a scoreboard?

Track & Measure Everything!”

- From TomFerry.com, Tom Ferry

“Research shows that beginning your day with a victory puts you in a positive mood. This morning momentum leads to more victories and continued progress throughout the day. You also win your health battles early in the morning. Making time to exercise and choosing the right foods for the first meal of the day will help you make better decisions all day long. The right decisions will give you more energy so that you will be more productive, mentally sharp, and free from fatigue—and even pain—all day long. Your first victory sets the proverbial ball rolling. This first win is also the biggest win and one that no one can take away from you. That’s why you must start early and control your morning, so that (barring external emergencies) your day will go exactly as planned.”

- From The Perfect Day Formula by Craig Ballantyne

“How you wake up each day and your morning routine (or lack thereof) dramatically affects your levels of success in every single area of your life. Focused, productive, successful mornings generate focused, productive, successful days -- which inevitably create a successful life -- in the same way that unfocused, unproductive, and mediocre mornings generate unfocused, unproductive, and mediocre days, and ultimately a mediocre quality of life. By simply changing the way you wake up in the morning, you can transform any area of your life, faster than you ever thought possible.”

- From The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod

“Early morning is the most critical time of each day. How you spend the beginning hours of your day sets the stage for the remaining hours. If you purposefully establish a routine for spending your early morning as you want to, you will have taken a giant step toward spending the rest of your life the way you want to. How we spend our mornings is the litmus test for our degree of self-mastery. Do we wake up with a plan for the day or are we scrambling, wasting time figuring out what we must do? If we have a plan for the day, do we consistently follow it? Do we follow a purposefully predetermined, set routine which makes us more efficient and productive, and allows more time to think and relax? Or do we haphazardly scramble to get ready and out the door to make it to work just in time? Our mornings expose the power of our routines. Whether our routines are made up of good habits or bad habits is most evident in how we spend our early morning hours. If we are to get the most out of life and come closer to reaching our potential, it’s crucial that we establish good morning habits that allow us to more effectively utilize our early morning hours.”

- From The Power of Habit by Jack D. Hodge

“Time is the most precious commodity we have. Therefore, how we manage it has the most profound effect on how our lives turn out. Either you run your day or your day will run you. It’s really a matter of deciding to be in charge. When you work, work; and when you play; play.” 

- From 7 Strategies for Wealth and Happiness by Jim Rohn

“Success requires us to do the first things first. Choose to use your time wisely. Figure out what really matters to you and then use the rest of the steps to build habits that allow you to focus your time on it.”

- From The Perfect Day Formula by Craig Ballantyne

“Clarity is power.”

- Tony Robbins

"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail."

- From Poor Richard's Almanack by Benjamin Franklin

“Every minute you spend in planning will save you as many as ten minutes in execution. It takes only 10-12 minutes for you to plan your entire day. But you will get back two hours of productive time, 120 minutes, just by planning your work before you begin. That is more than a 1,000 percent return on energy.”

- From Focal Point by Brian Tracy

“Founders of wildly successful businesses are, almost always, among the most disciplined people you’ll ever meet. There is no “gene” for this. Discipline is not something you inherit from your parents. What separates top performers from everyone else… is they choose to design their lives in such a way that following through on their goals becomes automatic. They install habits, routines, and systems which allow them to execute consistently with minimal friction.”

- From Craig Ballantyne email

“Creating a daily schedule and a consistent routine is a surefire way to go from unmotivated to motivated and aimless to amazing. It holds you accountable to yourself. It keeps your day from being upended by passing feelings, cravings, and wants.”

- From 10 Rules for Resilience by Joe De Sena

"Structure and routine are essential for productivity and success. They create a framework that allows you to focus and thrive."

- From Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy

“One of the most profound benefits of organizing your life into daily routines is that it’s much easier to reach your goals. Because when you predetermine which routines will enable you to reach your goals, success is as simple as doing things at the same times each day.”

- Hal Elrod

“The key to becoming world-class in your endeavors is to build your performance around world-class routines. It can be difficult, even futile, to predict or control what will show up in the middle of your workday. But you can almost always control how your day starts and ends.”

- From The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy