A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

4 ■ A CLASS WITH DRUCKER
one who lands the job. This happens even though the candidate’s experience
in the discipline is frequently far less than the one who tries to be
everything to everybody.
The same is true when it comes to managing our time in order to
achieve our goals, and Peter was a master time manager. Each of us has the
same amount of time, 24 hours a day. But some fritter away and waste their
time on work which has no bearing on what they would like to accomplish
or where they would like to be one, five, or ten years in the future.
Once you decide on “your business,” the non-essential work that you
do becomes obvious. Maybe you are in the wrong job for where you want
to be in ten years or for what you want to become. If that job is supporting
you as you struggle to gain knowledge or in other ways work toward
your “real” professional goal, you probably have to stick <strong>with</strong> it for the
time being. But you are much less likely to reach your goal than someone
who knows what “business” he or she is in and focuses on that to the
exclusion of other activity non-essential to this goal.
This doesn’t mean that you must avoid washing dishes or digging
ditches to earn necessary money while you are preparing yourself in other
ways to do what you really want. But it does mean that you need to decide
what you want, and then stick to activities which support “your business”
goals. From this first preliminary lesson I realized that this individual,
Peter <strong>Drucker</strong>, had something to say which was very valuable indeed, and
I applied it at once.
I Become Peter <strong>Drucker</strong>’s Student
I was heading up research and development for a company, but I felt I had
much to learn. On the technical side, I was well-supported by some firstrate
engineers. However, some of the business concepts I was dealing
<strong>with</strong> were unfamiliar. I had only a BS degree from West Point and an
MBA, so I decided the best solution was to further my academic education
in business.
At first I just wanted to take some additional courses. However, I soon
decided that what I really needed was a higher level of business education.
That meant a doctorate in business. I called two well-known universities
in my geographical area. Representatives at both institutions said
that if I wanted a doctorate, I had to quit my job and work on the doctorate
full-time. They told me that there was no such thing as studying for a