Until you know what they are, there is almost no chance you will live a genuinely magnificent and significant life. So, let me help you make a start toward identifying your key life goals. We all harbour basic aspirations like retiring with enough money to fund a great lifestyle for our families and ourselves, setting aside sufficient resources to educate our children in the best manner possible and perhaps helping some people along our journey through life.
If we compare awesome lives of the calibre of Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi with those of genocidal monster like Adolph Hitler and Idi Amin, we realise each such person had the same access to time that we do: Precisely 24 hours a day.
Some people choose to invest their lives in helping others, while others squanders theirs in an evil bid to accomplish some hellish purpose. While most of us will never accomplish as much pure benevolence as the first pair nor ever come close to committing as much utter malevolence as the second two, intuitively we know that what we choose to do with our time matters.
Our seconds, minutes, hours and days form the fabric of our one life on Earth. If we manage our time well, we will manage our life well; and I'm not talking about merely becoming more efficient! Our goal should be greater effectiveness.
Stephen Covey teaches the concept of ensuring your ladder is leaning against the correct wall before you begin a tiring climb to the top. I like to think of a troop of gungho boy scouts trekking through thick undergrowth for hours. Finally one enterprising young man, brighter and more agile than the rest, decide to clamber atop a tall tree. Imagine his companions' chagrin should he yell out "Guy! We've made great progress...but we're in the wrong forest."
Each of us has an unknown number of days. Most likely it will fall inside the range of 10,000 and 40,000 days. How many days we have exactly, only GOD knows; to the rest of us, it is the ultimate 'unknown quantity'. Thankfully, what is more important than how long we live is how well we live.
A life well lived is one that has extended its range and scope beyond the natural but selfish inward focus of an infant outward to the world at large. A balance needs to be attained between time spent on ourselves and time spent for others.
So, do yourself a favour by investing the appropriate quantum of time each day toiling, sleeping, playing, serving and loving. If you can achieve the correct personal balance between those five super-imperatives of life, you will live a satisfying, successful life. If you don't, you won't.
In determining the right balance for yourself, take time - no, make the time - to identify key life goals that matter to you. For each one, find and then define a cause bigger than yourself.
Live each day aiming to make some headway toward each of your important goals. This truth is reiterated in Brian Tracy's outstanding time management book
Eat That Frog! He teaches a blueprint for accomplishing important goals that comprises 7 steps:
- Decide exactly what you want
- Write it down
- Set a deadline on your goal
- Make a list of everything that you can think of that you are going to have to do to achieve your goal
- Organise the list into a plan
- Take action on your plan immediately
- Resolve to do something every single day that moves you toward your major goal
Rewrite the above 7 steps in your own handwriting. Then begin working through them-today. After all, as ancient Greek playwright Euripides once observed,"No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow."
And, my friend, that's why I hope you'll let the rest of today - and all your remaining tomorrows - count!
