Time and Energy

There are limits to what I can accomplish.

Oh, I'm pretty sure they are far beyond anything that I am currently trying, don't get me wrong. But there are limits.

The limits are 1) Time and 2) Energy.

1) Time. Time is limited in two senses:

a) Time in a day. There are only 24 hours in every day. Only 1440 minutes. Even if you make every minute very efficient, there is still only so much you can do.

b) Time in a life. Our lives are also limited. We don't know the precise limits for each individual, but we generally know the length. It's like leaving bread out on the counter: we don't know the precise time it will start to mold, but we know it's about a week.

2) Energy. Energy is limited in two ways:

a) Personal energy: We all only have so much energy in a day. There are things we can do to improve it - exercise, diet, active minds - but we still all only have a certain amount of it. Pushing ourselves to our limits with diet or sleep does not manufacture more, it only creates a deficit which we have to pay, leaving us without that energy for at least an equal amount of time.

b) Corporate energy: Corporate energy is limited by the fact that even in a large group of people, keeping focus and enthusiasm is a difficult thing. Generally speaking, we are all busy and have lives: to keep the energy level of a group of people high over a sustained period of time is a difficult tasks (this tends to be a hallmark of true leaders, who can call for levels of commitment and energy where lesser leaders have to cajole and threaten).

So based on these limits: personal time, life time, personal energy, corporate energy - how I am choosing to spend and live my life? For everything I want to focus on or should focus on, does it meet the requirements of being most important and critical, or do they fall into the category of filling time and burning energy to keep myself from being bored? Stephen Covey discusses the concept that the urgent should never get in the way of the important.

Do I know what' s important? Do I direct my limited time and energy there, or dissipate it on a host of lesser things?