Live by it!

It’s a Saturday night, a majority of the 25+ year old crowd could typically be found in the bars or clubs, making the most of their weekend and dancing to the rhythm of the night. The thought of any sort of extra brainy activity outside of deciding what color shoes matches their jeans, would make them cringe. This 26 year old would never openly admit that he spends a large portion of his weekend, AT THE OFFICE. I mean come on, at my age working on projects (sometimes off the clock), that’s like OMG. LAME…Well here’s my philosophy, you can call it my confession of a workaholic.

A good friend of mine and program director of a local sports radio station introduced a possible opportunity to me. I was asked to produce a demo of my sportscasting abilities to be presented to the broadcast division of the local NBA team for consideration to host their games on the radio. It needed to be around 5 minutes in length and he needed it by the following Monday morning. As a die-hard fan of this team I couldn’t resist this chance of a lifetime; although, I knew this task was going to be tricky considering I had never done anything sports related in my professional career and I already had a busy 40 hour work week/weekend laid out. Day by day I slowly started to conceptualize my presentation and was determined to get into a studio and finish the demo Sunday late afternoon for submission. Saturday night, the day before the big finale of this project, I found myself unable to sleep. I tossed and turned all night long with the demo in mind (workaholic jitters perhaps?). Finally I said forget it, at sunrise I’m going into the office and I’m going to do because the energy is there and I want to knock this out of the ballpark (or arena in this case)! I did just that and to my surprise it was exactly what he envisioned! I would’ve never been able to channel this energy nursing a hangover or somewhere wondering “where am I and who this sleeping next to me?”. This anecdote is just my confession of a workaholic and one of many personal examples.

Sure, I like to kick back.

Yes, I’m definitely drawn to the dance floor when the latest LMFAO song is thumping and a top shelf Long Island is in hand, but there’s always time for that. Sometimes a little focus can go a looong way.

When you observe successful people from afar it’s easy to assume they were born into their luxurious role overnight; however, when you study their background you quickly learn that, that notion is far from true. Michael Jordan spent countless hours in the gym, even as a professional athlete, honing his craft. President Barack Obama has countless degrees and tons of political achievements. Those fancy Steven Spielberg movies that we are easily enchanted by, required hours and hours of editing and creative energy. There wasn’t a 9-5 clock looming over their heads, I’m sure if there was they’d smash it! There’s nothing lame about going the extra mile, working outside of what’s required to give yourself an added advantage.

So, don’t waste anymore of your time and do something GREAT! Party afterward 🙂