Get On with Life—
It’s Whooshing Past
Every day, every second, life is whooshing past at an alarming
rate. And it goes on getting faster and faster. I once asked an
84-year-old man if life slowed down as you got older. His reply
was unprintable, but he explained to me in no uncertain terms
that no, it didn’t. It carried on getting faster. I sometimes
wonder if we aren’t picking up speed for take-off, if you know
what I mean—a sort of trial run before we leave. But the Rule,
if you want your life to be successful, happy, fulfilled, mean-
ingful, jam-packed with adventure and reward, is to simply get
on with it. And I’m sure you do, or you wouldn’t be reading
this.
So, how do we get on with it? Well, the easiest way is the same
way we would get on with anything else we knew we had to
do. We start with setting a target (a goal, an objective), make a
plan, formulate a set of actions to take us toward the target,
and then, well, get on with it.
Imagine you were a project manager for a big company that
wanted you to organize, say, an exhibition. You would begin
with clarifying what you wanted from the exhibition, what it
was supposed to achieve (for example, to sell 100 items or to
give away free gifts or to drum up 20 new customers). This
gives you something to aim for. Then you would formulate
your plan—booking the stand, arranging the staff, getting stuff
printed, etc. With the plan in place, you would work out what
you needed and then get on with it.
Life isn’t so different. It’s a project—albeit on a vast scale and
much more important than an exhibition stand.