Use Time Wisely

One of my all time favorite quotes comes from Seneca's On the Shortness of Life. It is long but so poignant. It reads as follows:

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it." -Seneca

One of his points throughout the book is that you can't measure the amount of time that you have left. Because you can't measure that time people are wasteful of how they spend it. One example he uses is that people will spend their whole lives seeking riches and fame that by the time they get all they want they have no life left. And that people are so busy seeking these things that the moments where they are actually "living life" are so few and far between that they don't amount to much of a life.

It has become apparent to me that our society has been inundated in consumerism. Two of the biggest expenses that most people have are their cars and their homes. Many people in our society buy cars and homes that are either beyond their means or that take up the bulk of their income. The result is that they have to work so hard to maintain their life style that they never have time to spend with their family. If they do find the time to do it they end up being stressed about money the whole time and they can't enjoy themselves. Couples fight over money and the list goes on and on. The problem is exponentiated when recreational vehicles, expensive gadgets, shopping sprees, and other luxuries are added. People get so busy making a living for themselves that they never live.

Make sure that as a leader you are actually living and that you aren't just spending all your time making a living for yourself. Even more important than that, as a leader you should ask yourself if you are leading people to lives that have meaning and are worth living or not. If not, what kind of leader are you?