Time to play Offense

With football season in full swing and second half of the fall semester upon on, I thought I'd use a little football terminology.  In order to get to Thanksgiving break, we are going to have to have a good offensive game plan.


1. Don't play defense.  When you are on defense, you end up staying up all night, you are always behind and trying to catch up, you overlook important things in your life that need attention, and eventually you will get scored on in the form of a bad test, illness, injury, or make a bad decision that leads to something worse.

2. Have a game plan.  Get your calendar out, put down all your deadlines for papers, exams, swim meets, other things in your life and create a strategy for getting things done on time.

3. Slow steady Drive. The best way to control the game is to run the ball and keep it simple.  Be consistent every day in your studying, sleep, health and faith.  It is more fun to run a flashy offense, but you are also more likely to turn the ball over and start to go on defense.

4. Good clock management. You have to manage the clock. Look at how you are spending your time.  Be efficient.

5. You can't use the whole playbook all the time.  Every coach has their favorite play or a play the crowd may like better.  You have to learn to stay disciplined and call the right play for the right situation.  Sometimes you have to say no.  The right play may be getting to the library, or getting to bed, or getting to Church on Sunday morning.

6. You can't win by yourself.  Use your teammates, you can do more together than you can by yourself.

7. Stick to the game plan.  When things start to go against you, we often want to over react and make bad decisions.  Trust your game plan and go back to executing what you know will work.

Enjoy being busy! You can always do more than you think!