On Success And Routine

A quick observation on life and successful people. The boy and I attended a meeting in Washington, DC and the host of the meeting, a highly successful and very wealthy man, was a few minutes late. He apologized for his three-minute late arrival and said he had been out running five miles and was a bit too sore to get dressed in his suit and tie quickly.

It hit me, as someone who has physically and, yes, mentally gone downhill of late, that this guy’s success was directly related to his organized and regimented schedule. He runs, he sits on the board of several international organizations and corporations, he writes non-fiction books, is undertaking an enormous new project that I hope we will be involved with and, to top it off, is one of the most respected investment advisors in the U.S. Oh, and it should be noted he is 64 years old and also has a Ph.D in international relations. Not just an average guy, mind you.

So I mention to The Boy about my theory on the correlation of success and a full life. He agreed whole-heartedly. There was a day, long gone by, when I also juggled a more full life and, I have to say, I was much more successful at many things during that time. It’s no secret, mind you, that one needs to be organized and focused in order to achieve things. I admitted to The Boy that I had been neither of late; in part because of a more scattered life and in part because of a lot of travel that has knocked me off any semblance of a routine.

One of the routines that may appear to be quite obvious is my lack of writing. The blog – newly designed now – is a monument to a lack of writing. Worse than this, I handed my manuscript over to a very good editor and successful novelist about six months ago. It was a major coup to get her to agree to edit for me. A few days later I was looking over my work and noticed it was a jumbled mess and I called her up and asked her not to read it quite yet. I told her I wanted to make some edits so the manuscript would make some sense. I wrote a bit and modified a bit, but basically put it away since then.

I guess the point of all of this is, if a 64-year-old guy can run five miles, make a few billion for himelf and his friends, chair a few organizations and write a few books, then certainly I can get off the dime and re-write a book that’s acceptable enough for the editor. And, in the meantime, if this gets me back to a more efficient and organized life, well, I just may reacquaint myself with some of that elusive success. Hopefully this quick note will lead me in the right direction.