By David Henzel, co-founder of TaskDrive—we support sales and marketing teams with personalized lead research and outbound campaigns.
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To truly be on your A game as a professional, it is important for any peak performer to maintain harmony in every aspect of their lives. As entrepreneurs, we easily make the time to plan and prioritize our business ventures, but it is just as important to upkeep similar principles for our personal lives and the role we play in our community.
There are tried and true systems we apply to our work, but many of us don’t tend to apply these structures to other areas of our lives. But these business principles are just as important to guide us to success when we apply them to other areas of our lives. I know my life has improved significantly since my fitness level and personal relations began thriving, all because I started to apply business principles to achieve personal mastery in all of my roles in life.
Anyone seeking success in business should also hone their self-leadership skills because if you don’t have your personal life and health in check, then it is inevitable that your work will face consequences as a result. If you get knocked out with an illness, your business suffers, and if you don’t spend quality time with your family, which could lead to discord, your professional life will also suffer. This is why it is important for professionals to take a holistic approach by maintaining a healthy and harmonious lifestyle—and keep it just as much of a priority as work. And, this can easily be managed by applying business principles to do so.
Know your vision, mission and core values.
So what does it mean to run your life like a business? First and foremost, you should have a clear vision and mission for your personal life and how you want your relationships to be as well as a series of core values you aspire to live by. These assets alone can help you choose how and where to distribute your time, which, in other words, means it can serve as the deciding factor for what activities you choose to say yes and no to.
Set personal goals and plan for them.
Similar to any business strategy, it is important to set your own personal goals and have a road map in place on how to achieve them, so you can properly plan for them. When scheduling your day or week, block the time out for the process of achieving your personal goals and make them as much of a priority as any professional obligation.
How we show up in our roles in our personal relationships is also an important part of being on your A game. Likewise, setting aside quality time with family and planning for family holidays are a few ways that, in the long run, can make your professional life smoother.
Have systems in place to measure your success.
It is business 101 that what you don’t measure, you can’t improve. If you want to lose weight, you need to know how much you weigh, and if you want to get fit, you need to plan for and measure how much and the ways you will work out. This is because to actually achieve your personal and relationship goals, you will most likely need to tweak your habits. Whether you are shaping a new one to break an old one or vice versa, measuring with tools such as a habit tracker and having reward milestones along the way can help facilitate the habit-forming process.
For example, if regular running practice or strength training is something you want to develop, then block out the time in the day you plan to do it and track the progress made. This is a way to make improvements more tangible. You may also find that setting aside the time to improve your physical state also has benefits that directly affect your professional life.
I used to never make the time to go running in the morning even though I wanted to. I would feel guilty scheduling that personal time in lieu of professional obligations. But when I made the decision to also prioritize my health and to plan for it, not only did my fitness level improve, but gaining a different perspective on things while running allowed me to conjure up creative solutions to work problems I had not been able to solve before.
I also never used to plan family trips and would only scrounge together a holiday at the last minute if it was something my wife said she absolutely wanted to do. But the thing is, not only was I paying more for the tickets and accommodation and canceling work meetings, but I was also depriving my family of the precious anticipation leading up to a trip. But now, by planning trips ahead of time and scheduling work obligations accordingly, my family is happier, the budget is lighter and my work obligations are not disrupted because of it.
Scheduling quality time with the people you care about and blocking off time in your schedule in which you are not available for business meetings are other ways to safeguard yourself from losing your work versus personal life balance.
Wrapping Up
Having the other aspects of your life aligned through systems operating like clockwork can also help keep you on course when roadblocks do surface. With the right mindset and your guiding vision, mission and values on deck, you can respond and not react when the sea gets rough—because having a well-rounded life can give you the right perspective to accept and move on.
Maintaining a positive attitude, being in strong physical condition and living in harmony with your community all contribute greatly to operating at your best as a professional. And these attributes can be achieved by applying the methods we know can reap success in our business in a holistic approach to the rest of our lives.
