Forget Strategy. Get Results.: Radical Management Attitudes That Will Deliver Outstanding Success

10

Future

“The ground around us is shifting. For some the future is a frightening place. I disagree. I see and relish a future of immense possibility.”

The Problem: Life itself

I have an absolute fear of being dead. Not of death, the moment, but of not existing. I have always been terrified of that and spent a lot of time thinking about it. I would wake at night, sweating, shaking, with palpitations, emerging from a semi-sleep, semi-dream thinking and worrying about it. It was the sense of the world carrying on without me in it, without me participating in and experiencing it. This lasted for many years. The only way to deal with it was to accept the inevitability of death and the futility of fighting it. You can't control your death – unless you choose suicide or euthanasia, and that is only the method of death, not its existence – but you can control your life.

The Solution: Using the now to control the future

Because I do not want to miss out on life, I try to use my days and nights 24/7. If I am not doing something, I feel I am wasting my time. I have a fear of wasting time. I cram it in, I push to stay awake as far as I can. Every now and then I crash for 24 hours. My body tells me to stop and recover. It used to be every nine months or so, then six, now as I get older it is every four months. It is my body's defence mechanism.

Every year I have four board meetings in Hong Kong, where I fly in overnight, arrive at 7 a.m., start the meeting at 9.30 and finish at 6 p.m. ...