InsideWork » Growing, Changing, and Finishing Strong

I see it every day and have observed it for years. People who stop learning and growing, stalled in life and work. People who won’t or can’t change, frozen in habits of mind and heart. People who started with all the promise in the world, full of vision and energy, now marking time or as I once heard they’ve become “dead men on furlough.”

The prospect of living (no, not living, but existing this way - because this is not living) scared me enough many years ago that I have spent a fair amount of time thinking, observing, and learning from those that did and did not finish well. What does it mean to finish well and how does one do it?

Finishing well is not the image of a runner who walks or half heartedly jogs all the laps of a race, only to sprint to the finish on the last lap. Finishing well begins with running well all the laps of the race.

So when I look at the end of a remarkable life like the Biblical hero, Caleb, (who when he was 85 years old took on one more challenge, one more conquest in Joshua 14:6-15 ) it motivates me to seek challenges to the end of my life. Caleb’s strong finish was the result of a lifetime of courage and faith.

Or I look at a small detail in the life of the apostle Paul, as he sits in a Roman jail awaiting his execution, he writes a last letter to his friend, Timothy, asking that when Timothy visits that he bring “my scrolls, especially the parchments.” In this detail, I see Paul continuing to study, think, learn, and meditate on God’s truth even to his last days. Always growing. Finishing the race well.

Therefore, in 1997 when I ran across this article by Peter Drucker, My Life as a Knowledge Worker, in Inc. Magazine I was very much challenged, encouraged, and helped by Drucker’s sharing of 7 experiences that shaped his remarkable life. The breadth and depth of his knowledge is unrivaled. His contribution to business thinking and practice is unmatched. His legacy will live on. But how did he develop a life that could have such impact? It was no accident, but years and years of practicing the seven lessons outlined in this article. Each life lesson he learned built on the others helping him to develop a masterpiece of living that enabled him to live purposefully, fully, and with impact till his death at age 96.

Let me encourage you to download this article. I won’t spoil it by summarizing it. Drucker provides timeless advice on how to live well and what it means to have a true legacy. Read it today. And then reread it each day for a week, taking one hour each of the seven days to think about how you would apply each of these seven lessons. Discuss the article with colleagues. Put this into practice.

I’ve been working on these now for over ten years, and they have made a difference.