Timeless virtue 5: Respect your time

On we travel with Robin Sharma through his book: "The Monk who sold his Ferrari". Today we are talking about what matters most, setting priorities, and making the most of our most precious commodity: time.

Balance around our priorities is the key concept.
Most of us either live frantically in the futur, planning and scheduling and dont stop enough to smell the roses or float through life without clearly defined goals and wonder where on earth all our days have gone when we havent achieved half of what we had wanted to do.

Mr Sharma is all for planning: " failing to plan is planning to fail." Slightly kitschy but does make the valid point that if we dont have the discipline to determine our priorities and focus our time around them, they are most likely to remain in the dream arena.

He refers back to the Pareto Principle which you may know as the "80/20" rule. That is the scientific fact that 20% of what we do leads to 80% of our results.20% of what you do will have an influence on the quality of your life. So be ruthless with your time and say no to the things which "waste' your time.
That does not mean rushing around hectically. That means determining which are the purposeful, meaningful things you want to focus your life on. Even if that means shutting down your computer and playing with total attention with a child, listening whole heartedly to a friend in need, honouring the values and fulfilling your life mission.

Goethe wrote:" Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least."
Robin Sharma urges us to simplify our lives: "Too mnay people are dreaming of some magical rose garden on the horizon, rather than enjoying the one growing in our backyards."
We need to cultivate a "deathbed mentality", making every moment count.Then all the little details which can make us so mad and are the cause of so much stress, just merge into insignificance in the background.

One of the simple quotations I like the most in his book is his recommendation to: "Never be a prisoner of your past, but the architect of your future."
Dont waste time fretting about past mistakes or events, learn from them and use them to build your future.

Here is to making it happen!