Day 176 - The Best You Can

April 02, 2026

Main Theme

You are always choosing—owning your choices gives you control.

Key Topics

The idea that inaction is still a choice
Avoiding responsibility vs. owning decisions
The impact of daily decisions
Personal responsibility and control
Shifting from passive to intentional behavior

Key Lessons

Every action or inaction is a choice.
Avoiding responsibility limits your control.
Awareness of choices leads to better decisions.
Consistent decisions shape long-term outcomes.
Ownership creates empowerment and direction.

Episode Transcript

Guy Reams (00:00.718)
Alright, I'm entitled to one slightly sarcastic blog a year. So here is this one. It's called The Best You Can. So someone told me today to do the best that I can. I nodded, thanked them, and walked away wondering what that actually meant. You know, people say this all the time. Do the best you can. But what does that phrase really mean when you try to pin it down? So I started thinking about it like a formula.

Maybe the best you can can is something like effort multiplied by skill, multiplied by focus, all constrained by your time, your energy, your resources. That was pretty highly technical. I wrote it out and looked at it and I felt more overwhelmed thinking about that than the concept of doing the best you can. That kind of precision misses the point, I think, entirely. The best you can is not a calculation you can run in advanced. It's not something you measure.

while you are in the middle of the work. You cannot optimize for it in real time because you do not have enough information yet. It seems to me that the best you can is a test that comes later. The best you can is what holds up when you look back. It's the choice that your future self does not question. Not because it was perfect, but because it was honest, given what you knew and what you had at the time. I've made decisions that I regret lots of.

I've also made decisions that did not work out, but that I still stand behind them because I did the best I could. The difference is not the outcome, I think. The difference is whether I can say I acted with the effort and attention the moment deserved. I think that's the line. The best you can is what holds up when you look back at things. So when someone tells you to do the best you can, they are not asking you to solve an equation.

They are asking you to show up fully enough that you will not have to explain it to yourself or wait, you will not have to explain yourself to yourself later. That is the simple standard and probably a harder one. So the next time I hear this, the best you can, I will now know what this means. Act in a way that my future self will not question my effort given the circumstances. I think that's enough and that's the best that I can do.