Begin with the End in Mind

By Mac Daddy, Family Matters

I’d like to start with parable. In the interest of full disclosure, I didn’t come up with this parable (more on that in a moment). In my opinion, it is the most important lesson I could teach anyone, and one I try to share with anyone who will listen.

Imagine you have a bucket, and you fill it with golf balls. Is the bucket full?

No, you could add some small pebbles, and they would trickle down through the empty spaces between the golf balls.

Does this look full to you?

Is it full now?

No, you could add some sand, and it would trickle down through the empty spaces between the small pebbles.

Is it full now?

No, you could add water, and it would trickle down through the empty spaces between the particles of sand.

So, what is the moral of the story, in a grand-scheme-of-life sense of things? The answer after the break…

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The parable I am describing comes from Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I didn’t hear the parable there first, though – it was years later that I discovered its origin. I hope Dr. Covey doesn’t mind my using a form of his parable here. In my opinion, it is a good read and provokes the kind of thoughts that can drive a person to real self-improvement, if taken to heart.

While the book in general focuses on how to be effective in all aspects of life, the parable here isn’t limited to efficiency or productivity – in fact, I feel it is better taken personally. With that in mind…onto the moral of the story….

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When I was first told this story, I thought about it briefly and concluded that the moral was that you can always do more. I may think that I’ve done a lot, but there is always more that could be done if I just got off my keister and did it. Furthermore, this has (by far) been the most common response from listeners in the countless times I have told this story. However, it’s something else.

The moral of the story is that if you want to get the golf balls into the bucket, you damned well better put them in first. Once you put in the pebbles, sand and water, you won’t be able to get all of those golf balls to fit in the bucket – some will have to be left out. As Dr. Covey puts it at other times, put first things first.

I've been to the Eiffel Tower, but it was never really a golf ball...

Of course, those golf balls (being the biggest items in the parable) represent those aspects of your life that are most important to you, whatever they may be. Faith, marriage, children, parents, career, philanthropy, visiting the Eiffel Tower, running a marathon, writing that novel, meeting Ben Affleck – to each his/her own. Only you can decide what those golf balls are. Make sure you do them while you can. To quote Kenneth Patton, “By labor we can find food and water, but all of our labor will not find for us another hour.”

I didn't meet him, as there were a zillion other people around, but there are his eyes behind 1,285 other arms holding up cameras at the Toronto International Film Festival. (BTW, this wasn't a golf ball either)

 If you fill your life with smaller things – paying the bills, renewing your passport, finishing the report on the Anderson deal that your manager has been asking for since last Thursday – you’ll find that the years have passed and you never got around to becoming a regular blood donor.

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Stephen Covey relates this parable in describing one of the seven habits that he feels highly effective people possess: They begin with the end in mind. In other words, they consider their course of action from the vantage point of how things will look in hindsight. When all is said and done, how will I reflect on what actually went down?

Dear reader, this post is about you, your life and specifically the legacy you are building at this very moment (it’s also about me, though more indirectly). Are you tending to your legacy? Have you thought about it? Have you thought on how you will look back on your career at your retirement party? Or how your life will look from your death bed? If you got hit by a bus tomorrow, how would you feel about the time you’ve been spending? What are your thoughts? Have you challenged those thoughts recently? If so, are you challenging them as frequently as you should?

This is what it is all about!

I mentioned time just now – make no mistake, this is all a question of time, because time is what limits us. This is especially true as we get closer and closer to fulfilling the legacy we hope to achieve. I feel I’ve always done a good job of keeping my priorities straight and making use of my time in a way that is consistent with what matters most to me. However, fatherhood really jolted my thought process on thinking about my legacy. It was clear to me that things were going to be busy – VERY BUSY – from now on. There are a lot of things I would like to think of when I think of my life idealistically. I knew (and still know) that if I don’t work those things in, I’ll wake up one morning and my career will be mostly done, my children grown, my hair turned grey (if it’s still there) and many of those ideals would only be good ideas rather than proud memories. And so I set about trying to be that man I would like to think I could be. A man of action, who matches his work in various arenas with the qualities he feels are important in a man.

Speaking personally, I think I can place my finger on those qualities, as I think a lot about them. In a spiritual sense, I want my general conduct to reflect what I feel are good values, regardless of what sense of spirituality one might embrace. I want to have done right by my marriage, to make the kind of effort I feel a man should make to do right by his partner. I want my actions to allow me to feel as though I have been a superlative father, to my dying breath. I want the time I invest in my career as a teacher (and as a parent of students) to reflect my belief in the tremendous importance of the education of children. I want to feel that I have used whatever financial success I have had in ways that always recognize that the common run of humankind are not nearly as fortunate as I have been in ways of money. I also want to spend that money in responsible ways that promote the values I hold rather than contributing to inequality and suffering. In short, I want to have done right by everyone I can possibly do right by, and I want to do it in exemplary fashion.

I hope I don’t sound arrogant when I say that I am proud of who I am, what I’ve accomplished, and what I continue to do. I’m not satisfied (nor should any individual who wishes for their legacy to be as full as possible), and I know I fall short in many ways I would prefer not to (hey, I’m still not a regular blood donor – one of many examples). I hope I can fill my life with more and more meaning as it continues….but I know I will continue to strive to do so, and I will keep keeping my end in mind. The jock inside of me thinks about it like the big game: When the final buzzer sounds, I want to have given it everything I’ve got.

How’s your legacy?