The Formula

 

In his book Launching Leaders, Steven A Hitz lays out what he calls “The Formula”, something he learned from Jim Ritchie. Jim Ritchie put together The Formula from advice he received from David B Haight, a leader in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and from J. Paul Getty’s book, How to Be Rich.

Wow. When I sat down to write about The Formula and how I’ve been thinking about it all week I’d forgotten that it was the cumulative work of so many wise men, who probably learned and developed it through the teaching and influence of many other wise men and women. We have to learn from one another.

Back to The Formula. Here it is:

1)    Get up early

2)    Work hard

3)    Get your education

4)    Find your oil

5)    Make your mark

6)    Give back

Sounds easy enough, right? Except I get stuck on the first one. I home school three kids, narrate and produce audiobooks and bake/decorate cakes out of my home, am the Young Women’s President at my church, and am going to school for Business Management. I love sleep. I need sleep. The idea of getting up before my children make it absolutely necessary to seems like a terrible idea to me. But…

But I know that almost every bit of advice for getting things done and being successful starts with “Get up early.” Part of me says that it’s correlation and not necessarily causation; that people who are go-getters and are going to be successful are the type who get up early and that getting up early doesn’t necessarily change you into one of those people. But…

But maybe it does. Maybe that little extra time that you get to yourself really does something. Whether you get up early to exercise, giving you a lift throughout the day and increased energy, or if you get up and read scriptures or other good books without falling asleep in the middle of a sentence, or to write in a journal, or to meditate, or any number of other things. What if the simple act of getting up early, doing something to make you grow even when you’d rather be doing something else, something easier, is the catalyst that gets you going.

Hmm…

This means I’ll have to experiment to find out the answer, huh? I already know that sleeping until my 3y/o runs down the hallway, and only getting up then because I know he’s probably getting into something he shouldn’t, means that I’m slow to get started, skip my workout at least half the time, and feel sluggish and in need of a nap by 3pm. What if I get up one hour earlier this week? 6am. It sounds atrocious to me. But…

But I can do it.