It’s funny, you know, how everyday life can get in the way. We start out with some sort of plan—even just a short-term intention—yet are later shocked to find we’re somewhere we never intended to be. It’s like going online “just for second” and an hour later finding you’re reading some obscure article about “The Principles of Collective Animal Behavior.” God only knows how you got there.
One day a few years back, out to lunch with a mentor from Kimberly-Clark, I found myself asking how he kept his busy life in order. With a fast-paced career, a wife, a few kids, how did this guy even find a second to talk to me? “I have clear priorities,” he said, “and I stick to them.” Okay, great, I thought. Priorities—I have a million of them, I remarked. He smiled. You have to treat life like a pickle jar, he told me. My writhed face must have confirmed I hadn’t heard the analogy before, because he went on.
Yes, a pickle jar. You have finite time, energy, and resources—that’s the jar. First, you have to fill up the jar with your big rocks—those things most important to you, those that if you accomplished nothing else, you’d still be happy. Next, smaller stones fill in the spaces left between the rocks with those things you’d really like to do. Then, pebbles fill in a little more. And then sand until you think you couldn’t possibly fit another molecule in the jar. Finally, you drown the rocks, pebbles, and sand with water—using those few minutes here and there to accomplish the least important things in your life.
By the end, I was smiling. There it was, the answer—so simple: It’s impossible to have a million number one priorities. And I’ve learned more since then, especially that it’s perfectly okay to let some things fall to the wayside if they don’t align with your priorities. Scott Brenton talked about our priorities as Orr Fellows—first to do outstanding work for the host companies, second to help grow the Fellowship. I would contend being part of an entrepreneurial fellowship is only a part of my life, albeit now a large part. Working at one of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S. certainly demands much of my time, but that’s okay because my work is a top priority for me right now. So I ask, what are your top priorities?
It takes a little reflection to figure out if you’re really spending the majority of your time on your top priorities, but I challenge you to do so. You’ll be happier six months from now when you pause to reflect upon where you’ve ended up. Because perhaps unlike in the past, you’ll be very near where you wanted to be.
The Orr Fellowship provides an opportunity for recent graduates to be placed in fast paced jobs within some of the top entrepreneurial companies in Indianapolis. For more information about the Fellowship program and how to apply, visit www.orrfellowship.org.
hat twice as many tech saavy entrepreneurs start businesses in their 50's as they do in their 20's, with an average age of start-up founders being 39. Not 20, not 25, not even 30. 39. To me, this says that experience is a great teacher, but more important is the kind of experience; being a former CEO of three failed start-ups at 30 might be great experience to lean on, but it probably isnt as effective as working within and learning how start-ups and small businesses should be run to build successful organizations. There is a proverb that goes something like "yesterday's tracks are tomorrows guides", and this is a perfect example of that; so, the first part of my answer to "why havent you started a business yet?" is: Why make the same mistakes you can learn from watching others?
ight circumstances to survive and grow. The team, the idea, the implementation, the market, everything needs to be well understood and in place before Ill want to touch money. Many a good idea have failed because they were missing a piece of the entrepreneurial puzzle, and all the hard work, long nights, and missed sleep was wasted. The thing is, we usually never hear about these companies, the ones that fail. Thats part of what makes entrepreneurship so attractive: we really only hear about the successes, and so it seems (to the untrainted eye) that starting and owning a business is easy as apple pie.
This year the 
This American Life is a radio program out of WBEZ in Chicago that attempts to display what it is like to live an ‘American life’, complete with its dullness as well as its luster. Reporting is not done in the way we see on television or hear on more traditional radio. Rather, the producers attempt to place us into the culture of the topic area; the sounds bites are not ‘bites’ at all. They are actual, full, complete stories that connect the listener to a new set of experiences. This American Life attempts to make the events that mold our being (whatever that means), which makes understanding the experience more transparent. The radio program, at it's core, is about manufacturing an experience. 
First and foremost, we firmly believe that the most valuable experience that one can attain while in college is leadership experience. Now that I've said this, let's take a minute to try and better understand what I'm talking about. When we're going through Orr Fellow candidate applications, having a candidate that was a "member" of twelve different clubs on campus in no way compares to a candidate that was president of two or three reputable clubs on their campus. To take this one step further, having a title means nothing if you didn't have any notable achievements while holding that particular position. We want to see that you were elected by your peers for a leadership position, but it is much more important that you made a positive impact to your organization during your tenure as officer. Leadership experience can be gained in many different ways, so there's no excuse for a lack of leadership on your resume. 
The next piece of information from your resume that we find extremely important is your GPA. This may come as no surprise, but the easiest way to demonstrate your intelligence is by getting good grades. Being that you're looking for Indiana jobs out of college, much like thousands of other students in their senior year of studies, this is one of the only standardized means of measurement that we can use to juxtapose you with the rest of the candidate base. So what if your GPA isn't as good as you'd like it to be? If this is the case for you, it in no way means that your chances of getting into the 
Another attribute that we look for in our candidates is their ability to demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit in their lives. One of the inherent qualities that all 
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