Top 7 Steps To Immortality

What you're doing today might not seem so important to you. But someday it's going to be important to somebody, maybe a lot of somebodies like your children and grandchildren. So, perhaps it would be good to evolve a plan so that when the time comes, you'll find it easy to recall, organize and write about your experiences and achievements - business and personal - as a beacon to those who follow you. You can start immediately. Here's how.

1. Make a list of the people who will most benefit from your experience: children, grandchildren, co-workers and business associates, societies, clubs, trade groups and organizations.
   
   
2. • Compartmentalize your activities
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   • Innovative work and achievements
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   • Volunteer roles and services
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   • Marriage and the family
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   • Education
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   • Personal views and observations about ethics and morality,
     careers, politics and religion, and other issues and activities
     that fit into your pattern of life.
   
   
   
3. View the events around you that will someday have historical significance; for example, the 2000 Presidential election; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; baseball's World Series and football's Super Bowl; and many more. Think about your observations and what you were doing when these events occurred.
   
   
4. Develop a pattern and discipline for jotting down events and activities as they occur.
   
   
5. Open and maintain dialogue with family, community, and business associates so that you'll know what kind of events and activities will have significance later on.
   
   
6. Sit back and reflect; allow time periodically to clear your mind, put your activities in perspective, and as thoughts emerge, jot them down.
   
   
7. Get organized; set up either file cards, a notebook, or computer to accept and store data until you're ready to use it.
   
   The value of doing all this might escape you. Don't let it. The satisfaction for having done so is far greater than the effort itself.

Bob Max, a successful corporate executive, consultant and entrepreneur. He is the founding director of Remember Me?, a family history documentation center. Help and information is available at its web site: www.rememberme2.com or through Bob at 908-273-4850, or mail to Remember Me?, PO Box 1, Summit, NJ 07902.