Do you know how many days you have been alive?  Use this calculator to find out.   I’ve been alive 16,619 days and about 24,000,000 minutes!  What if you only had a few more days, weeks or months left?  What would you do?

Do you have a sense of purpose?

Does your organization have a purpose?

Are you driving towards your mission and vision every day?

What slows you down?

How can you overcome those obstacles?

Who would you let down if you didn’t do everything you could to embrace each day fully?  This podcast may make you think of this a bit more clearly.

Does your organization have a sense of urgency, do you?  Dr. John Kotter, author of A Sense of Urgency, has posed several observations to recognize urgent behavior:

• A “want-to” attitude

• Determination to move and win now

• People are alert and proactive

• Problems are addressed by sharing information now

• People cooperate energetically

And here are some questions to help identify false urgency:

• Do people run from meeting to meeting not focusing on the most critical issues?

• Do people have trouble scheduling meetings on important initiatives?

• Are critical issues delegated without the involvement of key people?

You can read his lists here.

Given how quickly organizations, trends, people’s attention spans and the competition changes, living with a sense of urgency is critical to success.  If you are complacent, you may be letting those around you down and not living with true purpose.  Know your purpose and push with urgency every day to achieve it.  If you snooze, you lose.

“If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else.”  Yogi Berra