I have spent quite some time reflecting and studying organisation & lifestyle design for close to 10 years – corresponding to the time I joined Business School. Reading Tim Ferris’ The 4 hours workweek was an eye-opener. (I remain a Tim Ferris fans today I can’t recommend enough Tribe of Mentors, who is part of my absolute #mustread list).
As I stepped into the adulthood, I was confronted with the necessity to shift my focus from dreams to goals. Although this doesn’t mean renouncing to my dreams, it meant for me to take a step further into my ongoing self-discovery journey. This requires introspection and self-questioning, as well as time to reflect. Yet, as real life knocks on the door, I had to face two main realities: an overwhelming necessity to take responsibilities (get a job, behave as a normal social-being…) and constant social stimulation (friends, families, events… or simple the human necessity to gather and interact with each other). That resulted in a fairly busy lifestyle, constantly playing catch-up with life. It was not long before this fast-pace way of life got the best of me – if not all of me. I was not going anymore toward my goals but was carried away by the daily events wave – both work and social related. Probably this feeling is common to many.
Yet, I had no intention to give-up on my goals (and dreams) and decided to take on the challenge of integrating them into my daily life. That’s how I came up with the Priority concept, my tool to stay on track with my own plan. This works in a plain & simple way: on a regular basis I would reflect – usually in writing – on my ambitions, aspirations and desires. Once I am able to make sense of these, I try to turn some of them into simple & achievable goals. The goal being set, I them start to integrate short regular timing dedicated to taking actions leading to that goals, into my daily life. I then review such goals on a regular basis (as often as monthly), using if possible measurable input.
Let’s take an exemple, I aspire to keep progressing in my current career (ambition), hence I will set myself on track to meet experts or new people in the industry on a regular basis as well as reading a certain list of books in the next months (two measurable goals). This being done, I can work to integrate meeting plans and reading times (actions) into my schedule.
Another example could be sleep. I realized few years back I was simply not getting enough sleep and that was starting to affect potentially several aspects of my life, starting by my mood. I set to myself the target of 7 hours a night (measurable goal) and decided on a target bedtime that could allow me to get there (action). What I realized is that telling myself that I needed to sleep more had no effect, yet as soon as I was able to set a goal and action framework, it became reachable.
See an example of the Priority concept applied to reading here.
Such Priority concept allowed me to develop a set of what managers would call best-practices, and that are effectively a new – more adapted toward my goal – set of habits. What this also means is that once the priority is properly integrated to your daily life, it becomes a second nature and you don’t anymore need to go through the regular review process. This prevents you from becoming an endless list of priorities.
I’ll touch again on the Priority concept and its applications in further posts. Indeed this is not a science based bulletproof concept, simple a method that works for me, and this post is meant as a personal reflection on this concept. Please feel free to use, transform, make yours!
Keep it up!
Personal Optimum 