I spent part of this week at the First Rate Performance Conference. It was held at the Four Seasons resort in Las Colinas, Texas (which is a pretty nice place for a retreat).

In addition to hearing industry experts and company representatives talking about equations, risk management, and regulatory compliance, the conference featured Terry Hershey, who wrote a book called The Power of Pause (Becoming More by Doing Less).

In the book, Terry counters the modern cultural decree of More-Bigger-Faster.  His message was simple (and perhaps even easy). 

One of the takeaways was that some things are tactical, some things are strategic, and some things are transformational. All of these things can be good … but the quality of your life and the results results you get change as you spend less time with the tactical and move towards the transformational.

Hershey is a story-teller.  Here is one of them:

 

A teacher gave her class an assignment to name the seven wonders of the world.

Each student came up with a list and shared with the class. As you might guess, students called out entries like the Pyramids, the Amazon River, the Grand Canyon, or the Taj Mahal. The teacher cheered them on and told them what a great job they were doing.

But one girl stayed silent. The teacher asked her about her list, and the girl answered, "I don't think I understand the assignment."

"Why?"

"I don't have any of the right answers."

"Well, why don't you tell us which you wrote on your paper, and we'll help you."

"Okay," said the girl, "I think the seven wonders of the world are … to see, to hear, to touch, to smell, to feel, to love, and to belong."

 

Somewhere along the way, we tend to forget what we used to know.

How much of our daily experience is defined by what we shoot for and what we measure?

Life can be so "daily". That's a problem, isn't it?  No wonder we're easily tempted by things that are urgent, rather than important. But it doesn't have to be that way … and the first step is recognizing that it doesn't have to be that way. The second step is figuring out how you want it to be instead.

To see some of his messages in video format, click this link.

Related articles

• Harvard Business: The Power of Pause (blogs.hbr.org)