Conclusion

Dinner with a Friend from the Moon

It was one of the most amazing nights Trapper ever had. He had flown to Houston, Texas, to dine with a friend who just returned from the moon. His name was Jim Irwin. Jim was one of the Apollo 15 astronauts. He had known Jim his whole life.

So there he was, with the man from the moon where he could ask any question he wanted about that amazing trip. He did ask questions, countless questions. Then he said, “Jim, of all the many experiences you had on that trip, what do you consider to be the single most exciting? What do you think it was?”

Jim paused in thought. Then his eyes began to open wide and with a big grin on his face he said, “I’ll tell you what one thing was. To orbit the moon and watch the earth rise! To see this magnificent planet of ours come up as a tiny blue and white marble, so small in fact, I could reach out my thumb and cover it with my thumbnail.”

Then he followed with these words. He said, “If you want to get life’s problems, life’s challenges, life’s frustrations in their proper perspective, give that one a try. Orbit the moon and watch the earth rise. There is something about that that just shrinks life’s problems down to size.”

Trapper learned a principle that night that I’ll never forget. He called it the principle of perspective. He said, “You and I can be so close to a situation, condition, or an opportunity that we don’t really see what’s there. We’re too close.” In Irwin’s case, it was the planet. He lived here. But when he left the earth and was able to view it from a totally different perspective, it changed his life forever.

He saw Jim come back from the moon changed as a time manager, changed as a life manager, and he devoted the rest of his life to the service of humanity.

So what was Jim Irwin’s secret? He used the activity management skills you learned in this book to accomplish his goal of going to the moon.

First he demonstrated the skill of choosing. He chose to become an astronaut. He tracked all of his activities to ensure that nothing fell through the cracks. He arranged his activity plate, doing the activities in the right sequence. He had to make quick decisions, so he learned to flexicute. He remained focused and never lost sight of his goal, and he made it to the moon.

You can accomplish any goal you want when you simply implement these five activity management skills. Start today. Plan your attack and then attack your plan.

The remainder of the book offers 101 productivity strategies to help you focus more effectively. Many are inspired and in some cases have been taken directly from the Charles Hobbs Time Power Seminar and are used by permission.

We invite you to implement one productivity strategy each day. It takes just a minute or two to read, and the investment of time can pay huge dividends throughout the day.

We also invite you to practice the five activity management skills on a daily basis, without exception. If you do, you’ll find your skills will get better and better. Then, one day in the not-so-distant future, you might just say to yourself, “This really is ridiculously easy!”

Good luck and remember, attack every day with purpose.