“Suppose you woke up tomorrow and received two phone calls. The first phone call tells you that you have inherited $20 million, no strings attached. The second tells you that you have an incurable and terminal disease, and you have no more than 10 years to live. What would you do differently, and, in particular, what would you stop doing?” Jim Collins tells this story while a student at Stanford’s graduate business school. His teacher said to him, “Instead of leading a disciplined life, you lead a busy life.” This led Collins to make a major shift in his how he allocated the most precious of all resources: time. In his monograph Good to Great and the Social Sector, Collins argues that great organizations have piercing clarity about the intersection of three questions: 1) What are you deeply passionate about? 2) What can you be the best in the world at? 3) What drives your resource engine? (What makes economic sense?) Collin’s work helps me to step back, consider focus in the life of Jesus, and pray about my time allotments. The following is my addition to one of his great truisms: “Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness is a matter of conscious choice and discipline” to discern and to do God’s will and God’s will alone. What difference might this make in how you spend your time today?
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Apr
