The World works like a Treadmill

“The world works like a Treadmill. If you stop walking, you’re walking backwards. Learn relentlessly.”

In my many encounters with many professionals throughout my work life, I’ve seen many very successful ones and also many struggling ones. I’ve also seen successful ones who lost their jobs overnight and have to start struggling again. One commonality I’ve realized between the “strugglers” is complacency.

Especially in a volatile world today where things change so fast, the gap between what we know before and what we need to know now is widening at an unimaginable pace. The technologies which we were competent in were now commoditized. The tools and processes that we once proudly championed in are becoming obsolete. This is then we realized that we are losing our value as a professional.

Why then is there this phenomenon?

While we were busy fighting fire, constantly being interrupted by unimportant things or just lazing around excessively, we are in an unfavorable space; and the world continues to revolve in our absence. Consequently, we have left most of the ‘big rocks’ in our lives untouched.

Recently, I’ve attended Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” workshop and have resonated strongly with Habit 3 — Put First Things First, facilitated by Franklin Covey…