In his book Maverick, Ricardo Semler tells of a lesson he learned working at Semco: "We were in yet another meeting ... when we came to the purchase of $50,000 worth of file cabinets. Several departments had been waiting months for the cabinets and in desperation had decided to pool their requests. ...

"We didn't buy a single new file cabinet that day. Instead, we decided to stop the company for half a day and hold the First Biannual Semco File Inspection and Clean-out ...

"Our instructions were simple: We told everyone to look inside every file folder and purge every nonessential piece of paper ...

"I was one of Semco's biggest file hogs, with four large cabinets and a request for two more. After our cleanup, I trimmed down to a single cabinet, and that was pretty much how it went throughout the company ... The cleanup went so well that when everyone had finished, Semco auctioned off dozens of unneeded file cabinets." Sometimes what we think we need isn't what we really need. When we pray, we learn to distinguish between needs and wants.