What’s Most Important?

How would you like to be able to prioritize the truly important things in life – your family, your health and your personal dreams? What about the practice?  How does your perception of busyness and not having time for things translate to your role in the office?
 
There are only 24 hours in the day, after all. I’m not a time traveler. I’m doing the very best I can with what I’ve got.  I know all the excuses… I’ve used most of them myself. But the simple fact remains that if you are not focusing your time and energy on the important things, instead of the seemingly urgent things, then you are quite literally wasting your life away. We all are to some degree, actually. Whenever we do mindless, useless tasks, we are wasting our life away.
 
Those moments are irretrievable, gone, kaput, vanished forever into the void of the past.  So you don’t think you’re wasting time in the office?  The World Wide Web wastes time. The phone and email waste time. Gossip and complaining wastes time. Fixing mistakes you made when you were too busy waste time. You just wasted 10 seconds reading about wasteful ways of using up time.  Yes, Yes, really.
 
I hear nearly on a daily basis ‘We are so busy!’  The problem is this: Busy-ness is rarely, if ever time well spent. It’s not productive. Being busy is being unfocused and being unfocused causes you to spend more time and energy than you actually need when trying to get something done.
 
I’d like to share an interesting exercise that can demonstrate my point-
 
Get a sharp knife, a spoon and a cardboard box. Grab the spoon and try and poke a hole in the cardboard box. Try it a few times and see how you do. If you don’t make a hole in the box, that’s okay. Now grab the sharp knife and try and poke a hole in the box. Pretty easy right?
 
Busy is being the spoon. Productive is being the knife. Focus on what you need to get done and do it. So how do you go about it? The first is to take a long, honest look at the things you do and the things that frequently get pushed off (probably because you’re “too busy.”)

Do you hope to have a team meeting, but never really get around to it?  Maybe you know role playing would help, but you just don’t have time!

Well, get focused on the important tasks. Stop wasting time (and your life.)
 
Be the knife!

Bronze, Silver or Gold? You Decide!

Bronze, Silver or Gold?
You Decide.
 
While watching the 2012 Olympic Games on TV with his wife last summer, singer-songwriter Alex Boye received inspiration for his new song, “I Am Gold.”
 
“I was listening to the athletes being interviewed after they’d won their respective medals, and there was this pattern going on with the athletes,” Boye said. “It was like, the ones that won the bronze (said), ‘Oh, I didn’t think I would make it this far. I’m just happy I got to represent my country.’ … And then the silver medalist would say something like, ‘I tried my best.’ But the gold medalist would say something like, ‘I’ve dreamed of this moment since I was a child, I knew I’d won before I even got here.’
 
“It kinda got me thinking … about life outside athletics. What’s the quality of our daily thoughts and our conversations with our family … at work (and with our) friends? Are we engaged in bronze talk, silver talk or gold talk?”
 
The power of thoughts became a driving message behind the singer’s new song.  “I start thinking to myself, ‘What type of life am I pitching to myself,’ putting it in bronze, silver and gold category. And then I started getting excited, thinking, we can’t say stuff like ‘I can’t do it right’ or ‘I’m a failure’ or ‘this semester I’m going to slack’ or ‘I’m a terrible mother’ or ‘I’m probably going to get laid off,’ because I believe we bring about what we speak about.”
 
What kind of talk will you engage in today?  Bronze?  Silver?  Or GOLD?
 

Dr. Evans’ Leadership Journey!