The Crux of the Issue

Almost everything I can think of comes down to two points in regards to success, people and the ability to make the right crucial decisions.  I think this is true for both personal issues and business matters.

For example, do you know anyone that is habitually late?  Have you ever asked yourself why that person is always late or just sat back and observed them?  I have.  I get really cranky if I am going to be late.  I think it is a matter of respecting the other person's time and is also a reflection upon myself if I am late.  I know life happens and there are times that you can't avoid being late, but the people that I have observed that are always late are the people who don't care, get sidetracked easily, or that can't prioritize issues to get the important things done first.  In rare occasions I have seen people that exhibit all three of these characteristics and I try to stay as far away from them as possible.

To help with the issue of how to get "important" things done throughout the day, I often ask myself, "How important is this project in the big scheme of things?" and ultimately, "Does this project have to be done at all?'  A task may be fascinating, it could be very interesting, it may even add value to my life, but whether it warrants an investment of my time, at that particular time, is the overriding issue.

Do you really have to send 7000 text messages in a month (very often during work hours)?  Do you have to reconcile your checkbook before church? Do you have to spend time worrying about a possible office move when there are important jobs to work on before year end? 

Focusing on the crux of an issue isn't really that complicated or hard.  It simply takes a little discipline or giving up the mentality that you have to control everything.  It's obvious, the more time you spend on the unimportant issues, the less time you have for the high-priority issues.

A good way to look at this whole issue is that a successful person differs from an unsuccessful person by having the self-discipline to consistently do the things that need to be done in order to achieve the main, or important, objective, while an unsuccessful person tends to work on lower-priority projects far too much of the time and far too often.