There is one sentence I’ve probably said more than any other during my life. “You’re not wasting forty minutes of your life with me.” When I worked as a substitute teacher, I refused to treat a classroom like a study hall. If the teacher left lesson plans, we followed them. If they didn’t, we learned something anyway.
Sometimes it was leadership. Sometimes history. Sometimes current events. Sometimes life. It didn’t matter if the topic had anything to do with the class I was assigned to teach that day. What mattered was that thirty students had just handed me forty minutes of their lives.
That’s a gift. And gifts shouldn’t be wasted. I’ve realized recently that I still live by that same philosophy. I just have a different classroom. Instead of standing in front of a whiteboard, I sit behind a keyboard. Instead of forty minutes, you may spend four reading one of my blogs. Instead of a classroom of teenagers, I’m writing to people I’ve never met from around the world.
But my responsibility hasn’t changed. If you give me your time, I want to give you something worth taking home. I don’t really care whether the lesson comes from Scripture, leadership, relationships, baseball, history, AI, a Hallmark movie, a shopping cart sitting in the middle of a parking lot, or something funny that happened while standing in line at the grocery store.
Every experience has something to teach us if we’re willing to pay attention. Knowledge is everywhere. Wisdom is recognizing what to do with it. That’s why my writing seems to jump from one subject to another. One day I’m discussing Biblical prophecy. The next day I’m writing about playgrounds from the 1970s. Then relationships. Then common sense. Then leadership. Then cell phones.
Someone looking at my website for the first time might wonder, “What does this guy actually write about?” The answer is simple. I write about seeing life more clearly. Because I believe every experience carries a lesson. Sometimes God teaches us through success. Sometimes through failure. Sometimes through heartbreak. Sometimes through humor. Sometimes through something as ordinary as watching another person leave a shopping cart where it doesn’t belong.
Life is a classroom if we’re willing to become students. I don’t expect everyone to agree with every opinion I have. That’s okay. My goal has never been to make everyone think like me. My goal is simply this: if you spend your time with me, I hope you leave seeing the world just a little more clearly than you did before.
Time is the one thing none of us can ever return. Once someone gives us five minutes, they’re gone forever. That’s why I take writing seriously. Not because every article is profound. Not because every story changes someone’s life. But because someone chose to spend part of their life reading what I wrote.
That’s an incredible responsibility. And one I never want to take lightly. So whether you’re here for a laugh, a leadership lesson, a relationship insight, a Biblical discussion, or simply a different way of looking at the world… Welcome to my classroom.
I promise I’ll do my best not to waste your time.
Whether I’m writing about leadership, relationships, faith, or everyday life, the goal is always the same: to help people see the world a little more clearly than they did yesterday.
That’s the same philosophy behind my books.
Finding Your Transformative Life explores how changing the way we think changes the way we live. Beyond Blame helps readers understand why relationships succeed or fail without becoming trapped in bitterness. Principles of Leadership examines how integrity, faith, and accountability shape the way we influence others.
Different subjects. One purpose.
If you leave with something worth carrying into tomorrow, then we’ve both spent our time well.
Troy P Zehnder 