What will be your legacy?
When I was 17 someone asked me what my legacy was going to be. No one had ever asked me this before and honestly I never contemplated what people would think about me after I was dead.
The question was posed by a franchise company who allowed me to operate a painting business using their name and resources. They gave examples of business icons such as Ray Crock and Bill Gates while uncovering that there was nothing drastically different from those icons and myself.
Ever since then I have approached business and the decisions I make with the mindset that what I do today will be come my legacy tomorrow. From the time I spend with my family to the way I treat other people, all of it must pass through the legacy filter.
Some of the best advice I have been given is to remember that when you die your inbox will not be empty. You will always have one more thing that you can do but having your priorities in order will help you decide if you should.
I’ve heard responsible, organized professionals refer to this as “time management” but I would like to point out that time does not respond well to management. I’m pretty sure time has gone on at the same pace since it began and that there is no one that can tell it what to do. Instead the correct, however trivial, term is more appropriately “priority management”. All the successful people of the word got there by using 24 hour days and 7 day weeks. A conversely cold observation is that the less successful people of the world used the same amount of time.
There is no right or wrong answer to the question there is only those with a purpose and those without. What will be your legacy?
Zack Gallinger-Long 