Chapter Eight
“Live your life by a compass, not a clock.”
—Stephen Covey
By the time I graduated from college and people found out what I was up to with Practice Makes Perfect, I started to get requests to speak, mentor, and answer questions from people all around the world. Time after time, I would hear people say, “I don’t even remember what I was doing at your age, but I definitely was not changing the world.” People would comment on my young age, they would mention how impressed they were with me, some would flatter me, and others would talk about me like I was a Martian because of what I had accomplished. Time and time again, people would compare me to their lazy, unmotivated, undriven children. It was gratifying at first, but quickly became too much. I became annoyed that so many parents were judging their children based on a side-by-side comparison to me.
In 2015 I got invited to give two small graduation speeches, one to the seniors graduating from the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell, where I got my degree, and the other to the kids graduating from the second year of their fellowship in a nonprofit called America Needs You, which I participated in when I was a sophomore and junior in college. By the time I got to the graduation speeches, I was so tired and fed up with comparisons that I made that the theme of my talk, not only because it was obnoxious to consistently have people compared to me but because we all find our purpose at different points in our lives. At any given moment, we might be in the middle of a life event or experiencing something that is going to eventually give us the clarity we have been looking for to move forward and act on our purpose. Here’s the talk with some minor tweaks so it is reader-friendly:
Let’s talk about time. When people asked me about my theme for the talk and I said it was going to be about time, the first thing they did was laugh. If there is anything I am really good at doing, it is making sure I never have time, because I have used it all—every single minute of every single day. Then they laugh because they think that I am going to talk to you all about time management. And, of course, they know with all of the things I take on that I am probably not the best person to talk to you all about time management. So I won’t.
And just for the record, I actually never planned on talking about time management, because I don’t believe that there is such a thing as time management or a time management expert. If there were, I would definitely hire them.
See, the truth is we can’t manage time. We can manage our lives, but definitely not time. No matter what we do, the clock will always continue to tick. Isn’t that cool?
No matter what we do, the clock will always continue to tick.
Time is such an obscure concept.
If you’re here today, you probably know that there is never enough time. And you’re probably hoping that my speech doesn’t run too long. Because how ironic would it be if the person speaking about time didn’t understand the value of it?
Well, I do, so I’ll make my points quickly. Because this day and this time is all about you.
When you graduate from the America Needs You program today, the one thing you need to understand is that everyone has an internal clock. And everyone’s internal clock is wired very differently. Some of your clocks will tick for a very long time, and others not so long. All of our clocks started ticking at different times, and they will likely stop ticking at different times too.
Now you’re probably thinking, why is this twenty-three-year-old alum talking to you all about such a depressing topic on such a happy day? It’s because four years ago, or thirty-five thousand sixty-three hours ago, I was in your place.
And it actually isn’t that depressing. I want you all to enjoy the same success I have been blessed enough to see since then. I want to prevent you all from making the one mistake that so many people our age do, and that is sitting there and drawing your life’s path based on the people sitting next to you.
Do not take jobs or make personal decisions based on what the people sitting next to you are doing. Be your own person. Define a fulfilling life for yourself and chase it. Because fulfillment does not come from a job, from volunteering, or from working at a not-for-profit. Fulfillment comes from within. Fulfillment comes from understanding what you enjoy doing and what you do not enjoy doing and then increasing the amount of time you spend on the things you enjoy doing and reducing the amount of time you spend on the things you do not enjoy doing.
The only thing worse than taking jobs or making personal life decisions based on what the people next to you are doing is comparing yourself to what the average person your age is doing. You wind up running through life and spending your precious time seeing where you stack up. You lose sight of the fact that we all have one life and that we were all put on this Earth for a reason. We can spend our time searching for that reason or we can define that reason. We can spend our time planning what we want our meaningful life to look like or copying what others have done.
Try to avoid being a duplicate at all costs. If you do not have a goal or a purpose for your life today, I want you to leave this room knowing that your purpose or your goal is to make an impact, to make a dent in our world.
Stay away from trying to compare yourself to others. Even more importantly, do not sit there and compare your life to the average person or the average life. If you do that, you will be average. The average person gives back. The average person does not make a dent. And if you were average, you would not be here today.
You are all capable of so much more than average. In fact, you should all skew the average. Do not let the average define you. Each and every one of you has the capacity and the bandwidth to effect real change and make a dent in our world. The reality is that your clock may run much longer or much shorter than the person’s sitting next to you—and that is okay.
It is not how many days or hours we have; it is what we do with those minutes and seconds that count.
So do not waste the time that you do have thinking about the average path or your friend’s path. Instead, define your path.
I used my time in America Needs You to build and sustain meaningful relationships with my mentors, the volunteers, and their friends. They opened my eyes to the possibilities. And to this very day, they have continued to support me.
Two of them are in this room here today: Lev and Rob. And from each of them I learned something different. From Rob I learned that things do not just happen; you have to make them happen. In his words to me in an email we exchanged in 2011, he said, “Hustle never sleeps.” If you have had a chance to spend some time with Rob, you will know that it is a very “Rob” thing to say.
And from Lev I learned that you need to follow your gut and that at the end of the day, the most important person you have to answer to . . . is yourself, so do not live someone else’s life.
Since my America Needs You experience, I have gone on to graduate in the top 10 percent of my class at Cornell, raised almost $2 million to advance summer education for economically disadvantaged youth who grew up like me, and directly influenced the lives of over five hundred children through Practice Makes Perfect.
Lev, Rob, and I have a few things in common: we were all raised on modest means, have loving mothers, and have made a conscious decision to dedicate a portion of our lives to developing others, whether that be through America Needs You, Practice Makes Perfect, or Hunter College.
You all have the capacity and the bandwidth to effect real change. Each and every one of you can make a huge dent in our world. And we need more of them.
So again, do not sit there comparing yourself to what the average is or to what other people are doing. Your clock may run much longer or shorter than the person’s sitting next to you—and that is okay. Your one real obligation in this world is to be you. Be the most authentic and genuine version of you.
So, when you graduate today . . . go ahead and compare averages . . . I dare you.
Thank you and God bless you all.
The first disservice is when people compare themselves to you and their kids to you. The second disservice is when you start to compare yourself to others. And the final disservice is when you begin to compare yourself to the average. The only thing you need to be concerned with is your time. Do yourself that service and start to frame your thinking through the lens of your time.