Living in prime time

Is work personal?

I can’t understand why certain people would say, "It’s just business; nothing personal."

Many people use this phrase as a signature license to do whatever they want to whoever they like in order to achieve their own selfish ends.

Their favorite quotation is: "The end justifies the meanness." This should not be.

Business is personal.

Our work life is personal.

We spend a great deal of our time in it so how can it not be personal?

But as in all things, life is an issue of balance.

With the demands and challenges one has to face in the 21st century scenario, we do not only learn how to keep our personal and professional life in balance, we should be committed to keeping it.

I was listening to famous author and motivational speaker Denis Waitley one day and I heard him say something that made a lasting impact on me. He says:

"It is important to be living in prime time rather than watching TV in prime time."

I watch television but I don’t dwell there. A few moments of the news and perhaps an educational or entertaining program is fine but to spend countless hours every night in front of the boob tube being idiotized by it is not my cup of tea.

One day, the math teacher saw that Little Johnny wasn’t paying attention in class. She called on him and said, "Johnny! What are 2 and 4 and 28 and 44?"

Johnny quickly replied, "CBS, NBC, HBO and the Cartoon Network."

And so the question here is: "Are our children watching too much TV too?"

The late Frank Lloyd Wright says: "Television is chewing gum for the eyes."

Neil Postman says: "The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter, but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining."

And I guess the most thought provoking words come from a TV personality himself David Frost when he said, "Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn’t have in your home."

We should try other things too.

Read books. Listen to tapes and be on a continuous learning mode.

Another thing about prime time living is this. We need to spend time getting to know our people better.

My partners and I run a Leadership Development Training Program and in one of the exercises we conduct, the participants are challenged to determine whether they "REALLY KNOW" their people or not and guess what…they don’t!

This revealing exercise indicate that we may spend countless hours with our people in the work place but the fact of the matter is that we know them very little. We go through the demands of business, we’re busy putting out fires all the time and we don’t really know our people in a deeper level whereas doing so would make us work with them better making work a lot more fun and meaningful.

Life is short and some days are long.

Prime time living also means taking a break from it all and to be attuned to our Maker.

To live our life for a purpose and to find meaning in what we do.

We need to pursue wealth but we first need to understand what it is that makes us wealthy.

Wealth is important but it means different things to people in different situations.

To the sick people wealth is health. To the lonely person wealth is someone to talk to and share with. To the abandoned person wealth is having someone who cares and to the estranged person, wealth is the reassurance of love and forgiveness.

What is wealth to you and me?

There are many things in our closet today that no longer make us happy.

We will never have enough of the things that will not make us happy.

Apart from pursuing wealth we must also create wealth for others.

Somebody says money is like manure. Keep it stacked up in one place and it stinks but spread it all around and it fertilizes.

My family and I spent the last Christmas holidays in Mountain View City California. This once obscure place is now famous because of one company named "Google."

What blesses my heart was I saw how this company has been pouring in money developing their community and building up the city. They understand that it is important for them to exercise good Corporate Citizenship."

We must do the same. We need to bless others with God’s blessings upon us.

There is a difference between living a long life and living a full life.

I’ll go for the "fullness" thing. Anytime…all the time.

(You can listen to Francis Kong through his radio program "Business Matters" aired 8:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. daily over 98.7 dzFE-FM ‘The Master’s Touch’, the classical music station.)