Session 2 – Time is Running Out

Fast Action Steps

1. What activities, projects, and events, which add minimal value to your life and work, could you begin to eliminate?
2. Have you taken full responsibility for your own personal and professional growth? What are the areas where you could be more intentional?
3. Clearly summarize what you want to accomplish and become with your remaining years of energy.
4. Are you fully committed to immediately apply the tools and principles in this course to experience more margin and more fulfillment in your life, work, and leadership?

Session Transcript

If you’re like me, you think of yourself as time conscious. Like, you’re really interested in making the best use of your time and your energy so you can bring your highest and best to your life, work, and leadership. The National Institute of Standards and Technology or NIST, as it is referred to, coordinates universal time and you’ve probably seen on your computer or on your device the code or the acronym UTC, and that’s what it stands for – Universal Time. NIST is asked 50,000 times a second what time it is. That’s a lot of people, a lot of devices who are concerned about time!

How many times a day do you check your watch, or do you check your device? Is it 10 times or 20 times or 30 times? Or maybe you’re the guy that discovers that your time is still stuck on Standard Time two days after Daylight Savings Time began. Or if you travel, maybe you have trouble remembering to update your watch for the different time zones that you pass through.

Most people mark time by how old or how young they are until they get into their 40’s. Then it happens! You realize that you are never going to be young again – and you begin considering how much time you have left and what your life is going to mean. In fact, it may be why you’re here today.

So why do we spend so much time with activities, projects, and events that add minimal value to our life and to our work? Only to compound the problem by wasting more time on regret or grief or on poor decisions or behaviors.

Maybe it’s because, in all of our years of rolling around on this planet, we never stopped long enough to consider the purpose for our life, for our work, and the disciplines that would be necessary to fulfill that purpose.

Most people who know me well consider me to be relatively adept at time management. I can squeeze every last productive moment out of a work day. But, no matter how hard I try, there’s one thing that I’ve never learned how to do, as it relates to time, and that’s add time to my day. How can we add more time to the day?

Not one of us can add even a second to our day. When our time is up – it’s over!

The question then that we should be asking is – What am I doing with the time that I have left? What is it that I want my life to mean? How do I want other people to remember my life when I’m gone?

Years ago, I realized that developing influence with people, making an impact in my market, and leaving a positive legacy were not sure things. If my life was going to matter – to my family, to my friends, to my colleagues, to our clients – I was going to have to live and grow on purpose. I would need to be very intentional with how I live.

The only problem was, nobody stepped up with a step-by-step trail guide for my life and my work. I had to take personal responsibility for my personal and professional growth – and while we have put together a lot of tools and a lot of resources since that time, you’re going to have to take personal responsibility for your own growth too!

So, I did. I made a ton of mistakes, and you’re going to make mistakes, too. That’s okay.

What’s important is that we are making regular progress.

• • From where we are toward where we are headed.
  • From what we used to do to what we were made to do.
  • From what is comfortable to what is most fulfilling in our life and in our work.
  • From what is convenient to what is most valuable, and from what benefits me to what benefits other people.

Time, Margin, and Focus is the chief competitor for your personal growth. Time, Margin, and Focus is the chief competitor for the development of your leadership skills and for the development of other people, and for working with your colleagues and the leaders above you even if they don’t do a great job with leadership. Time, Margin, and Focus is your chief competitor, what are you doing about it?

Next Session

In the next session, I am going to introduce you to the Simple Leadership Compass and we’re going to look at the 4 Greatest Challenges Leaders Are Facing Today and how to deal with them.

You’ll hear us say often, “You don’t have to get it perfect; you just need to take the next step.”

So, I’ll see you in the next session.[/text_block]