“The Worst Enemy of the Best is the Good”

Sue and Woody Roland at Annual Team Conference 2010

Woody Roland, our Latin American Director, recently shared at our Annual Team Conference.  I  wrote to him and requested a copy of what he shared.  I felt what he said was so relevant for each of us today.  The following are my annotated notes from his text. 

Each of us has experienced the conflict of two forces in our lives, the clock and the compass.  Stephen Covey in his book, “First Things First” uses these two articles to describe the difference between the pressure of our agenda and the values that should guide our agenda.  

The clock represents our commitments, appointments, schedules and activities.  Basically how we manage the time in our daily lives.

The compass represents our core values, our consciousness, and our personal vision for life.  Basically what we believe is important.

We know there is a gap when there is too much space between the clock and the compass.  When how we spend our time daily, does not contribute to what we believe to be important.  People who find themselves in this position perhaps would decide the solution is to learn how to manage their time better.  They go to a store and buy a book that will teach them how to better manage their daily agenda.  After reading the book, they implement the suggestions into their daily lives; they even become experts in this area.  Unfortunately the space between the compass and the clock does not change.  They have just become better on how to manage the clock.

Each of us, daily have two choices to make.  The first is a conscious commitment to the important things in our lives.  And second, we must commit to filter out those things that are unimportant.