What I Learned this Week: Keep Dreaming

The most important thing I learned this week was: Don’t let today’s work steal your dreams or tomorrow’s possibilities.

There is always something to do: a phone call to make or return, an email to respond to, a correction to address, a 1-pager or plan to create, before you know it — the day, week, and month have flown by and you may or may not have done anything on your task list that you wanted to do because you were so consumed with doing what you had to do.

Don’t waste all your days, career or life just doing the work. Of course, the work matters, but leadership is more than just focusing on and managing what exists today — leadership is also about creating what can exist tomorrow.

The problem is that urgency crowds out strategy.

The best leaders don't just ask: "What needs my attention today?"

They also ask:

• What could we do better?

• What opportunities are we missing?

• What could this team become?

• What are we doing simply because we've always done it that way?

Keep the main thing the main thing, but make sure you're carving out time to think about what could be instead of only focusing on what is.

Don't let today's work steal tomorrow's possibilities.