The last couple of days I had an incident which made me think about the wise words of my friend Rick Schmitz, who keeps asking himself and those around him:
“There is a finite amount of heartbeats you have left. What do you want to use them for?”
As dramatic as this sounds — there is an undeniable truth in his statement. We all spend way too much time with the things which don’t really matter. The tasks which eat up our time but don’t move the needle. The meetings we take out of courtesy. The projects we know don’t go anywhere but we still can’t kill off.
I keep a list of 3–5 ‘big boulders’ I want to move forward at any given time. Projects I am passionate about, which feed my soul and will make a difference. And then I spend at least half my time on these projects.
Make sure that you spend at least half your heartbeats on the stuff that matters to you. Life is too short.