If today was your last day?
The rock band Nickelback asked me this chilling question as I was driving home yesterday. That is a fantastic business question, I thought to myself. What if today was your last workday? You're on your way home tonight and bang-o, the last thing you remember is city bus number nine, punching your ticket to the Promised Land.
Let's further assume that your boss and office mates will be able to delve into your last day at work. What would they see? Would it be the idealistic person with a strong work ethic who logged on at 7:50am and worked on each task diligently seeing them through to completion? Would they remember someone who took time to help, but not time to gossip? Would you be proud of yourself looking down from the Pearly Gates?
No one is spot-on all the time. But do you remember when you had such passion for your job? The level of enthusiasm where you never had to clock watch because the time blew by so fast you wondered; how could it already be 5 p.m.?
In the song it asks; what would you do if you knew ahead of time it was your last day? I too must ask you, what would you do different? Maybe it's time to patch up that riff with a co-worker that has been bugging you, call on a customer you've blown off or make good on a promise you've let slide. Whatever it is, think about it, today could literally be your last chance to fix it.
The Devil is in the details or so the proverb goes. At today’s frenetic pace, it is easy to blow off and over look things until tomorrow, or to make them unimportant in your mind so you can skip them completely. If today was your last workday, would you care more about returning an unreturned phone call or email? Let’s instead see this last workday as the day all other workdays in your life will be judged by.
My hope for myself, as well as for you, is that we are very far from our last days. My further hope is that we will stop acting like we have nothing but time on our hands.
