Who do you want to be? How will you get there? These twin questions plague the success-driven. Ask yourself, where do you want to be in 10 to 20 years? Then ask, what do you have to do today to be there? Julius Caesar was 42 and the Roman Governor of Spain when, happening upon a statue of Alexander the Great, it occurred to him that the younger man had conquered the then-known world when he was 33. Caesar responded by changing his life, and the rest is history.
Planning for your future requires one important element: organization. It involves taking the various components of your life and assembling them into a systematic routine aimed toward a particular result. Absent organization, you can look forward to frustration, wasted time, poor performance and lack of perspective.
Organizing your life yields three priceless resources: time, efficiency and perspective. Everybody has the first of these. Each day contains 24 hours that can never be captured again. If the average life of a person is 73.5 years, that’s 26,827 days, or 643,860 available hours.
But time is finite. When we waste it, we can’t simply go back and make up for it. Like cash in the bank, it must be managed. And by managing our time, we gain control of this resource, and can accomplish more in a shorter period.
The dividend of time management is efficiency, the ability to do more with less. The wealth and ease that most people have in the United States is a direct result of increased efficiency. The evolution of the world from agricultural to industrial and now to an information age is tied to ever-increasing productivity. We thus need to look for ways to continue to increase our own productivity. Are we involved with overlapping activities with negligible rewards? Every wasted activity eliminated is time discovered to produce more results.
Perspective is the ability to form a clear view of your environment. How often have you felt so overwhelmed, only to realize that you were going in circles? The person without perspective cannot see their path. But when we can step back for a moment and consider ourselves as outsiders might, we can correct our course. The Portuguese navigators of the 14th century kept detailed log books and records of their voyages to uncharted waters. In fact, they were considered state secrets. In our life’s voyage, it’s only by keeping detailed records of successes and failures and the choices that brought us there that we’re able to adjust our course for more profitable waters.
So where should we begin? First, take an honest look at ourselves. Three major steps will follow:
No. 1, examine every aspect of your life–work, leisure and spiritual-and make an inventory. Assess the tools you have at your disposal. What is your expertise? Who is around who might give you insight? What are your assets and liabilities? Where are you wasting time? Are you spending too much time relaxing? How much time do you spend at work? What are your work processes? Where is your work being duplicated?
No. 2, group the different parts of your life into components. Ask yourself, what is important? Then incorporate these various aspects into one central command post, sometimes called an organizer.
The Roman army was one of the most successful in history because it was one of the best-trained and best-organized ever. It was divided into divisions, or legions, of 6,000 men. These were in turn divided into cohorts, which had several centurions over various units. Through superior organization, Caesar was able to conquer the larger but less-well-organized armies of Gaul in a few years. Your organizer can likewise become a central command post from which you will be able to direct the needed resources to win the war. It should contain some lever of control over every aspect of your life.
No. 3, execute your plan of attack. Do you need to make more sales? Do you need more products? More locations? More quiet time? With a panoramic view of your personal battlefield you can begin plotting your strategy for the rest of your life.
We are only given one life, and now is the time to make it count. We can’t go back and capture lost time. We can only look forward and make the time we have left count. By organizing ourselves, we can all get there.
Fred Koury is CEO of Small Business News Inc. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].