On my first day at the Big Firm, I walked into my new office and there on my polished mahogany desk was a stack of time sheets. And on top of the time sheets, my mentor had left a little yellow sticky note that said, “Remember, your time sheet is your Bible.”

“Time is what we sell,” he would remind me. And like many young lawyers, I became obsessed with the billable hour, neurotic about capturing my time, measuring myself (and my worth) in tenths and quarters of hours. Driven to inquire in every moment, “Is it billable?”

Happily I have left the billable hour behind. But I realize that my mentor wasn’t completely nuts.

Time is all we have.

I picked up my friend Kevin at the quay; he had anchored his beautiful sloop out in the harbor of the tiny village in Ireland where we spend half the year. Kevin is about 10 years older than me; and about a decade ago he had cashed in his chips from a career in financial advising, bought a sailboat and sailed to the Caribbean; then, single handed, had sailed across the Atlantic to Ireland.

“How are you?” I asked.

Kevin looked directly into my eyes and grinned. “Wealthy,” he said.

I didn’t quite know what he meant… had he hit the lottery?… had he made a great play in the market?… so I let the statement just hang in the air for a moment… .

Kevin’s eyes sparkled. “I am wealthy in time,” he said.

Those of us who are driven to succeed (yes, of course, I’m talking to myself here too) often measure our self worth by our net worth. We forget that wealth is not just about our bank accounts. It’s about our health and wellness, about the quality of our relationships; it’s about our spiritual and emotional grounding, and our capacity to reflect; it about the lives we touch, and about the impact we are making in the world.

It’s about how we value and spend our time. As Annie Dillard writes, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

We’ve come to the last quarter of the year. How will you spend it? What will the bottom line look like for you when you come to the end?

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And while we’re at it, HOW is 2016 shaping up? Would you like to make it your best year ever? If you’re ready to take your business, your career, and your life to a whole new level, let’s have a conversation and see if coaching might make sense for you. Email me at: walt@walthampton.com