The Secret to Life...

Sandy Koufax

Before I start, let me issue a warning: If you aren’t a sports person, you might decide to skip this blog. But don’t. You are about to learn the secret to life.

Okay, now let me get started …

When I was a kid I dreamed of being a baseball player. As you may infer, that never happened. At least I get to write about it. (Small miracles, right?)

Well, I recently got to watch the moderated discussion between Joe Torre and Sandy Koufax on Fox Sports. Joe Torre is mainly known for coaching a second-rate team called the New York Yankees. Yeah, I said it. What you going to do about it?

Sandy Koufax, on the other hand, is known for many things. He pitched four no-hitters, including the eighth perfect game in baseball history. He had 2,396 strikeouts, won the Cy Young award four times, and, oh yeah, he was retired by 30.

Take that, Torre.

Sandy Koufax became something of an enigma. People thought he knew the secret to life, a personal philosophy that worked in his favor.

An interviewer asked him once who his biggest influence was. He said that it was his grandfather. He went on to say that his grandfather had a saying that he lived by.

And this is the secret to life, according to Sandy Koufax’s grandfather.

What was that saying?

Say no to drugs?

Live long and prosper?

I’ll be back?

No, no, and nope. (Great sayings, though).

The saying—his secret to life—was: “Be loose with your money and tight with your time.”

Imagine how cool it was to be Sandy Koufax. My grandfather never spit out wisdom like this. He mainly said things like “pass the peas” and “listen to your dad.”

“Be loose with your money and tight with your time.” Pretty cool.

So let’s talk about this “secret of life.”

We can all agree that time is finite, right? In our day-to-day lives and duties, time is finite for sure. We aren’t machines who can simply move faster to make more widgets.

We have no ability to stretch time. To make things last.

Therefore, we have to use our time well. If you work upwards of 12 hours a day, that’s a long time. Are you choosing the things you do with your time wisely? Are you working so that you can get out of the office faster, make more money, and provide value to your clients? Or are you constantly taking breaks to catch up on the Real Housewives of New Jersey, twitter, and Facebook?

(Love the real housewives, by the way … especially Theresa. She seems like a great cook.)

Now I’m not saying that everyone should be working every minute. Remember, I’m a huge fan of Ultradian breaks. In fact, I took a break between paragraph three and paragraph four.

Instead, I’m asking you to think about the moments you spend at your job and in your personal life. Are you making the very best use of your time? Or are you wasting an opportunity to be doing something better?

Are you getting the sleep you need? Are you spending quality time with the people you care about? Are you giving the people you work with 100 percent of your attention when needed? Or are you waiting for the next thing to happen, and not living in the moment?

Think about it. When you get really old like me (I’ve been 28 for the last number of years) and look back at the years, the stuff that you will regret the most is the time lost. You won’t regret the money you lost.

Time is our most valuable commodity. (Thank God it’s not being traded on the open market yet. I wouldn’t want time to be a part of our recession. How horrible would that be?)

I’ve been very fortunate in my life and would say that I’ve become pretty good with managing my time. I treat time with respect and try not to waste it. I joke about how much TV I watch and how lazy I am, but the truth is that I get a great deal of joy out of everything I do. Everything has a purpose for me, and this gives me a great deal of nourishment.

Can you say the same thing? And for those of you in your 20s, trust me when I say that you have no idea how little time it takes to get form 25 to 60 years old.

It goes by in a blink.

Today’s challenge: Consider adopting Sandy Koufax’s grandfather’s secret of life, if just for a day. Well, adopt at least part of it. Take the “loose with your money” part with a grain of salt. But “tight with time” … put that in the bank.