You Can Not Escape This Fact!

Recently a young man in suburban Chicago tried to escape during his trial, as he had seen done many times on television. While being led out of the courtroom, he burst free, ran across a walkway, and tried to leap through a window. But the bulletproof glass didn't break, and the man bounced off, landing on the floor where he was promptly rearrested, this time in worse trouble than ever.

In the same way you can not get away from the fact that time is limited. Failure to acknowledge that simple truth has been the result of more job frustration, strained relationships and failure to reach personal goals. And each day you try to "run away" from this reality you are placing all those things that are important to you in the prison of "I'll get to it tomorrow" or "someday."

For today, why not acknowledge that your time is limited and prioritize your day. Go so far as to do something that you have been putting off for a long time because you have kept saying, "I'll get to it." You might be surprised just how much "freedom" you experience.

Wisdom From A Child

It has been an interesting 2 months around our home. Our family dog had puppies in early February and due to an unfortunate illness, she died when the puppies were just days old. Consequently, our family has been bottle feeding and raising them without a mother. They are healthy, fun and bring so much joy to my children.

My older daughter made an insightful comment just last week. She said, "It's kind of frustrating with the puppies. When they are young but can't do much, you have to spend so much time on them. Then, when they are older and are so much fun, you are so far behind on everything else that you can't spend all the time with them you want to." WOW! What a profound statement about the need for us all to be the ringmasters of our circus.

If we don't take care of our high priority items now, we severely limit our ability to get the most important things done later because we are always playing "catch up." What are you putting off today that may limit your choices of how to use your time and energy tomorrow?

An Extra Hour For Your Lineup

There were some interesting findings in a regular feature of Reader's Digest. In It's Around The World article it asked people from around the world, "What would you do with an extra hour?" Some of the results were:

• Spain: 50% would use it for family time
• Turkey: 41% would exercise
• Germany: 37% would sleep
• India: 50% would work another hour at their job

In the US the results were:

• 37% Family Time
• 32% Sleep
• 23% Exercise
• 9% Work

What is even more intriguing is how obtainable an hour could be for many people. Get up 15 minutes earlier, take 15 minutes less for lunch, cut out 15 minutes of web surfing or TV viewing and you already have 45 minutes. Send a couple less e mails and text messages and you are approaching the coveted hour.

The key is being a good ringmaster and making the best use of your discretionary time to make these moments a reality-regardless of how you plan to spend it. What would YOU do with an extra hour-and what are you willing to change to make it a reality.

Delete and Delegate

In the spirit of keeping things simple, try just two ideas as you begin planning for next week.

1) Delete the unnecessary. Look at your list of "stuff" to do. What can be deleted? What projects are just not important and can be gotten rid of? Sometimes we brainstorm tasks that can be done and forget to ask the question, should they be done. Remember, there is no shortage of acts for your circus. You can't do it all. We have to pick, choose and prioritize.

2) Delegate. What can be given to someone else to do? Who has excess capacity that can help out? Who can you budget to pay to take care of some less than productive tasks that will free you up to accomplish more critical things? Delegate or die! Let others be part of your circus.

Focus on these 2 ideas next week and see what kind of a difference it makes in what you are able to accomplish. You might just find you are getting more standing ovations from yourself.