Turbo Leadership Systems^™

Enthusiasm makes our lives a treasure

Randy, director of general services for a large building company in southern Oregon, told Session 7B of the Leadership Development Lab:

"The Leadership Development Lab assignment we were given at Session 3 that was accompanied by a 5X red dot to remind us was to approach some languishing project with five times more enthusiasm. This Lab assignment came just as we were moving into our new offices. I had dreaded sorting through fifteen years of accumulated piles of plans, files, notebooks, and assorted odds and ends of chotskies and memorabilia. When I put my red dot on my watch at the 5:00 position, I decided to dive into the task with five times the enthusiasm, 'commitment in action' as Larry calls it. My objective was to clean up the clutter. I was determined to be ruthless in tossing out obsolete material that had taken up precious space and served little purpose except to literally collect dust for fifteen years. I was determined not to just mindlessly move it to my new office. I wanted as much as possible to move a new me into my new office. As I dug in, I soon began to come across interesting items; snapshots of our old truck fleet, staff in their much younger days, a set of rotomill teeth used to demonstrate the correct and incorrect method of adding 'armor'. I even came across some historic documents that were relevant to a zoning project that I am presently working on. Things didn't go as quickly as I thought they would because I was uncovering some real buried treasures, almost like an archeological dig.

The lesson I learned from this experience

is that regardless of the drudgery that might be associated with a task, it is possible that something fun or worthwhile can come from it when I go into it with five times more enthusiasm.

The action I call you to take is to look for something positive in even the most mundane of your duties. Dive in to all of your tasks with the positive, expectant, upbeat attitude of enthusiasm! The benefit you will gain is that at the very least, the job will get done and you can put it behind you quicker. You can be sure that in the process you will discover something fun, interesting, and worthwhile."

Most of us have many treasures in our life that we can't find because they are buried beneath the clutter. The more we have, and we all have plenty, the more challenging it can be to stay on top of it, to stay sufficiently organized so that we can find what we need when we need it. Today could be a great day, as it says in Making Moments Matter – 89 Tools For Taking Charge of Your Time, to clean up or throw it out – Time Management Tool #42 – Throw it out!