Pondering What Is Important

A friend of mine pondering what is important.  And he's not even retired yet!

I recently did one of those online life expectancy calculations on myself.  The claim of the website where I found the life expectancy calculator is that it, "uses the most current and carefully researched medical and scientific data in order to estimate how old you will live to be."  Sounds pretty authoritative, huh.

Well I answered the forty questions it asked relating to my age, gender, family background, overall health, fitness level, driving habits, stress levels, etc., and then the website went through its calculations.  It said that my life expectancy indicated that I would probably live another 7800 days.  I thought, “Not bad for a guy my age and weight.”

Now I know that none of us can really determine how long we will be on this earth.  There are just too many variables and not enough equations to calculate a specific passing date.  But if I can expect to live another 7800 days then I probably should give some thought as to what I might do with that much time.

Before retirement I knew a few managers who would set aside time upon which no one was allowed to infringe.  The time was set aside just for pondering.  These were almost always good managers, and in hindsight it seems unfortunate that most mangers do not set aside such time.  .

Former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, "What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important."  

I believe he was right and I believe I probably learned this too late in my life.  It seems like the press of the day to day grind on my job made what was urgent seem to be most important.  After I retired and I was able to look at things through a different priority scheme.  I realized that the really important things take time to ponder and develop and the urgent things just steal time needed for that pondering and developing.  I wonder how much I could have accomplished if I had learned this before retirement?  Retirement will probably be better if I set aside some time to ponder, and that is really what these blog posts are about.

In case you are interested, I found the calculator at https://www.livingto100.com/.