I was recently talking with a friend who was struggling with how he was going to find the time and discipline to do a daily analysis of how he was doing in living his core values. I had suggested taking about 10 minutes a day to review his day through the lens of the values he embraced at his core. The regular time commitment of this daily review seemed almost impossible to him.
He was having a bad case of normal.
He is not alone. He is among the majority who could use an investment analysis. That is a time investment analysis. My purpose in writing Return On Integrity was to reframe the first thing top leaders think about when they think of ROI. But in this case, it would be helpful to do an analysis of the return on investment … of time!
I would challenge each of us, me included, to do a time analysis. Think about the return you receive on the investment of your time. I am convinced, in my own self-analysis, I could easily find a few “10-minute” segments where the “return” would be questionable and some segments that are a complete waste of time. And the return on most 10-minute segments would pale in comparison to the return found in spending 10-minutes a day to review how you are doing in living your core values.
Lack of time is not the issue. And we know it.
That is a convenient excuse that blinds us to the bigger challenge. It’s the real challenge of investing of our whole mind, heart and soul. Yet once we rise to the challenge of a daily values review, we discover an incredible return … on our integrity … and on the daily investment of time it took to realize it!