Strategic Lifestyle Planning - Time is Money

I have always encouraged individuals to develop Strategic Lifestyle Plans for themselves. What exactly is a lifestyle strategy? Like a business's strategic plan, a strategic lifestyle plan is a technique to create a purposeful design for your life that defines what you most desire out of life.

Many people develop their professional ambitions as individuals and then adjust their life to those plans. They then get engrossed in the day-to-day operations of their work and lifestyles, losing sight of the broader picture. As a result, individuals often struggle to establish a sense of balance in their life. By adapting your life to your company or job, you are really wasting time and energy managing your life. You've nearly built another employment or company for yourself (full- or part-time).

What you end up doing is continuously "finessing" your life to match your profession, and I'm not talking about the economics of the lifestyle you can support with your employment. Instead, I recommend that you first establish and develop a life and lifestyle that supports your values, beliefs, and ambitions, and then organize your job or company around that approach.

After that, you may think carefully about how you're spending your time - how you'd want to concentrate on the most important things to you and how to lessen or remove the things that no longer serve you. Another classic business statistic, Return on Investment, or ROI, may be used to examine this. ROI is a performance metric used to assess the effectiveness of an investment or to compare the effectiveness of several investments. Any business's purpose is to capitalize on or maximize the overall returns on every investment.

As we have learned, time is the new money (LINK) in our lives. Because time is money, we understand that our time is our most valuable investment. We may then apply ROI criteria to everything that takes up our time.

Have you ever grudgingly accepted an invitation to a party when you truly loved the hosts but knew you didn't want to see the majority of the other guests? And did the party turn out to be as horrible as you had anticipated? The greater investment would have been to have a private meal with the couple. What if that buddy phoned and invited you to play golf with him and two other people you've been hoping to meet? You're terrible at golf, have spent hours dragging your tail about in the blazing heat, and have had a dreadful day since there's never a "good" time to discuss business. Wouldn't it have been a better investment to hold off until a better opportunity arose?

 Choosing how to spend your time isn't always as straightforward as it seems in the real-life lessons I've shared with you. You must discover your own method of accomplishing things without having "THE solution," complex mathematical calculations, or expensive computer software.

I like to keep things simple, so here are some principles I use to help me determine how to spend my time (or how to assess how I spend my time so I don't make the same errors over and again):

 Find Win-Win Situations

I have always encouraged individuals to develop Strategic Lifestyle Plans for themselves. What exactly is a lifestyle strategy? Like a business's strategic plan, a strategic lifestyle plan is a technique to create a purposeful design for your life that defines what you most desire out of life.

 Many people develop their professional ambitions as individuals and then adjust their life to those plans. They then get engrossed in the day-to-day operations of their work and lifestyles, losing sight of the broader picture. As a result, individuals often struggle to establish a sense of balance in their life. By adapting your life to your company or job, you are really wasting time and energy managing your life. You've nearly built another employment or company for yourself (full- or part-time). What you end up doing is continuously "finessing" your life to match your profession, and I'm not talking about the economics of the lifestyle you can support with your employment.

Instead, I recommend that you first establish and develop a life and lifestyle that supports your values, beliefs, and ambitions, and then organize your job or company around that approach. After that, you may think carefully about how you're spending your time - how you'd want to concentrate on the most important things to you and how to lessen or remove the things that no longer serve you.

 Another classic business statistic, Return on Investment, or ROI, may be used to examine this. ROI is a performance metric used to assess the effectiveness of an investment or to compare the effectiveness of several investments. Any business's purpose is to capitalize on or maximize the overall returns on every investment. As we have learned, time is the new money (LINK) in our lives. Because time is money, we understand that our time is our most valuable investment. We may then apply ROI criteria to everything that takes up our time.

Have you ever grudgingly accepted an invitation to a party when you truly loved the hosts but knew you didn't want to see the majority of the other guests? And did the party turn out to be as horrible as you had anticipated? The greater investment would have been to have a private meal with the couple. What if that buddy phoned and invited you to play golf with him and two other people you've been hoping to meet? You're terrible at golf, have spent hours dragging your tail about in the blazing heat, and have had a dreadful day since there's never a "good" time to discuss business. Wouldn't it have been a better investment to hold off until a better opportunity arose?

Choosing how to spend your time isn't always as straightforward as it seems in the real-life lessons I've shared with you. You must discover your own method of accomplishing things without having "THE solution," complex mathematical calculations, or expensive computer software. I like to keep things simple, so here are some principles I use to help me determine how to spend my time (or how to assess how I spend my time so I don't make the same errors over and again):