Hohoho, Merry Christmas.
I’m not a Christian, but I share the joy and celebrate Christmas with my Christian friends.
Here’s what I would like to share with you in this meaningful and joyful day…
How To Focus On Your Priorities In Life
Everyone has 24 hours a day, and no matter what we do, we cannot generate more time. And thus, the only way if we want to get better, produce more results and achieve greater success is to optimize the 24 hours that we have.
Do you know that life can be categorized into these 5 areas? They are:
1. Health
2. Work
3. Family
4. Friends
5. Personal
Imagine that life is like a house with 5 rooms. And each of the room is represented by the 5 areas above.
You can go into any room you want and do whatever you want inside. You can go into the “Health” room and workout to get healthy and improve your stamina. Or you can also go into the “Work” room and build your career or build your own business.
You can choose to get into any room you want to improve quality in that area of your life.
The problem is that there is only one you. There’s only so much you can do in a day and you have 24 hours a day. So how should you choose and what should you do?
When you go into the “Family” room, it simply means that you will be spending less time on all the other 4 rooms. When you into the “Personal” room to read books and enjoy your hobby, you will automatically spend less time on your “Work” and “Friends” room.
And because there is only one you and you have a limited time to spend in your life, you must learn to prioritize and work smart to create better results in each area.
And this is what I would like to share with you on this meaningful day.
I have seen people spent time working to build their career and they totally forgot about their families. And I have also seen people spent too much time with their friends and work until their health becomes an issue.
Living The Work-Life Balance Concept
And there is no way you can achieve work-life balance. If you try to spend an equal amount of time in each area in life, it simply means that you will become the Jack of all trades and master of none.
Unless you have created a system for things to work, you can never achieve the work-life balance equation.
For example, you can spend most of your time and put most of your focus into building your business system that requires only your minimal supervision. And when you have reached a certain level that you don’t have to spend so much time on your business anymore, you can spend more time on other areas such as family and health.
However, this requires you to spend a massive amount of time and effort into one area BEFORE you can achieve the balance equation.
Luckily, we value and prioritize the 5 areas differently as we go through life. When we were young and just step into the work life, we tend to have big dreams and we want to accomplish great results in our career.
Thus, we will spend more time working and building our business and career. Until after we have built our own family, we will spend more time with our family and less time on the other areas.
And as our age grow, we started to feel less energetic and hence, we begin to work on our health. By the time we retired, we will spend most of our time on health, family, and friendships, not so much about work anymore.
Identify Your Priority And Value Your Time
If you want to live a better life and do better in each area of your life, you must learn to prioritize and value your time.
Forget about the work-life balance concept or trying to achieve it, instead, work on what is important to you.
Most people wish to spend their time with people they love. They want to spend time with their family and friends, travel together and enjoying life together.
The problem is that they need to spend time working as well because they have big dreams and want to achieve success in their career too.
So what can you do?
Here are some tips for you:
1. Outsource your work or create a system
When it comes to work, we can leverage on other people’s energy and time. We can hire employees to work for us. We can outsource and delegate our tasks to others so that we get to spend more time on other areas in our life.
This is what most business owners will do. They spend less time in their business after they have built a system that can work with their minimal supervision.
2. Make the most out of your time
When you work, work. Put in 100% concentration and focus in doing your work. When you enjoy your family and friends’ time, enjoy to the fullest.
Practice the “guilt-free” focus. When you work, don’t feel guilty that you did not spend enough time with your family. When you are with your family, don’t feel guilty that you don’t spend enough time on your work.
Value your time and be present at the moment. As the saying goes, “Work hard, play hard”. And there is a quote that I like from Richard Branson, he said:
“I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.”
3. Identify what you want in life
It all comes down to what you want in the end. If your main priority is to build a successful business, be prepared to make some sacrifices and try to explain your family on your situation.
And it all depends on how you define success too.
Try to compare your life with people who work 20 hours a day and who don’t spend time with their family or exercise, you will feel that exercise is a waste of time.
If you compare yourself with people who value their health, you will feel like you should spend more time exercising and less time at work.
Therefore, it all depends on what you want and how you define the things that you want.
Make your priority right and clarify what you want to achieve in your life.
When you are crystal clear with what you want, you can then travel in the direction without having to worry about other areas or what other people say about you.
Conclusion
I wish you a happy and Merry Christmas. And at the same time, I wish that you will understand better about yourself and know your priority in life.
And that is what you need to live a successful life.
Merry Christmas,
Shawn Lim