Who Will Cry When You Die\?: Life Lessons From The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari pdfdrive com

26.
Focus on the Worthy
A while ago a FedEx package arrived at my office. Inside was an envelope with
a gold seal placed on the fold and my name carefully written on the front. I
quickly opened it and began to read the letter within. It was from the CEO of a
major corporation who had picked up my book Leadership Wisdom from the
Monk Who Sold His Ferrari at an airport while on his way to a business meeting
in Europe. He said he was a lifelong student of leadership and was intrigued by
the title, which had brought a smile to his face.
This executive had been under tremendous pressure as a result of the
overwhelming demands placed on him and was hoping to learn some ways to
improve his leadership effectiveness so that he could spend more time on the
things that really mattered, both in his business life and in his personal world. In
his letter, he wrote:
As I read your story about this man whose life had become too complex and
out of control, I began to connect with a part of myself that I had not
connected with for many, many years. I began to think about the people in
my organization who look to me for guidance and inspiration. I began to
think about my wife who had been begging me to take a vacation for the
past five years. And I thought about my three children who had watched
their father spend the finest years of their youth climbing the imaginary
ladder of success. I consider myself a strong person but as I continued to
read your book, I began to sob, quietly at first and then uncontrollably, so
much so that the flight attendant rushed over and politely asked if
everything was alright.
The CEO continued:
That moment was a wake-up call for me, an experience I will carry with me
until the day that I die. I knew that I had to make some serious changes in
the way that I was leading and in the way that I was living. So on that
flight, sitting 35,000 feet above the world below, I promised myself that I
would commit myself to eliminating the multitude of distractions in my life
and concentrate on only the fundamentals, those few activities that really

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had the power to make a difference in the way I worked and lived. I
promised to stop reading six newspapers a day, handling every piece of
mail that appeared in my in-basket and accepting every dinner invitation
that came my way. I even had the title of your chapter on personal
effectiveness, which you aptly called ‘Focus on the Worthy,’ made into a
plaque that I keep on my desk to remind me that ‘the person who tries to do
everything ultimately achieves nothing.’ I cannot tell you how much better
my life has become since I began to live by this simple philosophy. Thank
you.
Time is your most precious commodity and yet most of us live our lives as
if we have all the time in the world. The real secret to getting control of your life
is to restore a sense of focus in your days. The real secret to getting things done
is knowing what things need to be left undone. Once you start spending the
hours of your days only on those high-leverage activities and priorities that will
advance your life’s mission and legacy, everything will change. Many of
history’s greatest thinkers have arrived at the same conclusion. The sage
Confucius put it this way, “The person who chases two rabbits catches neither,”
while the Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius said, “Let thine occupations be
few if thou wouldst lead a tranquil life.” Management guru Peter Drucker made
the point of wisdom in yet another way when he wrote, “There is nothing so
useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

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