I got a sad note from a friend and former colleague saying he was near the end of his battle with cancer. He has been fighting an aggressive form of cancer for years. He kept all of us in his network up to date on the options, the treatments, the clinical trials and the hopes of beating it. The note today was resigned to the fact that he would not win his battle with cancer.

I tend to be focused on planning for the future, whether it be retirement of next steps in my career. I shared that trait with my former colleague - I remember him worrying if he had enough saved for retirement. It has taken focused effort to value the present and not live my life always looking to what comes next. I work very hard to appreciate and live in the moment, rather than toil away waiting for the next thing.

Reading his note reinforced to me how temporary is everything. He was a strong advocate of developing other people. He explained that he saw his legacy in terms of the people he helped. He was one of the first leaders that truly lived that mission.

I’m beginning a new chapter in a consulting engagement where I have been playing an interim Chief Technology Officer role at a healthcare technology company. As my role has been clearly “interim” the temporary nature of my role has always been front-and-center to me. In some ways, I worry that it prevents me from helping define and deliver the vision for the firm. I have come to believe that the temporary nature of my assignment gives me more clarity to be sure I am focused on the most important priorities to make the biggest impact.

I don’t have the luxury of thinking I will always be around to work on something more as a consultant. The nature of my work is to be sure I’m focusing on the most important impact, and moving as quickly as I can to deliver. As a corollary, I often have to think about the work I’m doing and how it will sustain even after I’m gone. It forces me to think about meaningful change, and empowering others to step up into new roles. I find my charter to be delivering impact and ongoing value well after I’m gone.

No job, whether consulting or permanent, is a forever job. We may not be thinking about what comes next when we start a new job, but it will be inevitable that we leave that job someday. When we don’t consider our time in role as limited, we can trick ourselves in to thinking we will have time in some mythical future to complete something on our to-do list. We have more reason to push things off until later. What if you only had 90 more days in your job, what would you spend your time on?

As I think about this question in any technical leadership role, it helps frame the importance of spending time on only those most important things. Only things you can do. When you delegate some of your work to others on your team, you develop their capability to carry on without you (and establish a powerful relationship as a leader). Find ways to set up others to get things done when you are no longer around.