I’m sure we are familiar with the term “Get a life!”, which is usually directed at someone else in a manner hardly construable as positive, flattering or affirming. Well, do you have a life? At the end of yesterday, did you quietly reflect upon what you had achieved? Did you meet your goals? Why or why not? This morning, did you visualize your day and determine what three things you MUST do today? How many of those three things have you finished by now?

Many of us do not have a life simply because we actually live half-lives. Now, we know that, when a radioactive substance such as uranium decays, the half life of that radioactive substance means the time it takes for a given mass of, uranium, for example, say 1 kg, to decay until only 500g is left. For uranium 238, that half-life is 4.46 billion years. For Carbon 14, the half life is 5730 years. Different isotopes of different substances have half lives of varying orders of magnitude. However, the point is that it would take an inordinate amount of time for the radioactive substance to disappear completely, in that the last atom changes into something else due to emission of radiation. If we take only half-steps towards our goals we would never reach any of them.

Think about that. Is that how you go about your day? Are you half-hearted when you set out to accomplish what you set out to accomplish, or to fulfill what your employers might reasonably expect of you? The rock star of consulting, Alan Weiss, puts it this way, “It is far better to move three things a mile than to move a hundred things an inch.” I agree heartily.

What is one thing you can push a mile today? What is one goal you can genuinely say you have accomplished today? Go for it!