Just how do you spend your waking hours?
All of us have 168 hours a week. How you spend these hours will determine how successful you will be. The Magic Trio identifies success as the amount of your life you love. Consequently, people who spend more of their total waking hours enjoying life will be most successful. Until you obtain financial independence, your
definition of work life balance should go something like 40-10-10-50 (hours). I’ll illustrate further. 58 hours per week ought to be allocated to sleeping and personal hygiene. That leaves 110 hours each week for you to spend your time. If you’re working 50 hours a week at a job you despise, you happen to be spending just about 50% of your waking hours not taking pleasure in your life. If this is the case, then you are not successful. If you are financially independent, you may only spend 10 hours per week or less overseeing your work-independent income streams. Presuming you are also in good physical shape, you are probably enjoying 90% to 100% of your life.
Many people are not at 90%.
If you’re not there yet, you need to take steps to get there. This means making time to transform your life whilst keeping up with your existing accountabilities. As you can see, personal time management becomes a crucial skill to have. Time management is key to enjoying life full-time because if you aren’t able to make enough time to take constant actions, enjoying life full-time will almost always be a fantasy that’s unrealistic. After reading this guide, you’ll learn how you can operate effectively so these continuous action steps are not going to take up a tremendous amount of time, but you will still have to make some time. How should you spend your waking hours? The Magic Trio work life balance definition starts at 40-10-10-50, however, if you do it the right way, it will turn out at 0-10-10-90. Next, I’ll provide you with a hypothetical breakdown of how I would do things, presuming you’re an adult with a full-time job that sustains your current lifestyle.
Weekly time: 168 hours.
You should be sleeping at least seven hours daily. Slumber is a very underrated component of a healthy and happy lifestyle. If you’re one of the people who says “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”, you may be sleeping much earlier than you’d want. Devote at least seven hours nightly to good quality sleep. You might not be capable of this every night, however, if you don’t get enough one night, then attempt to compensate for it the following night. This may seem unusual, but make sleep a target just like everything else you would like to accomplish. I try to get 50 hours a week. Trust me, your body will thank you for it and you will have more vitality throughout the remaining hours of the week which you’ll need if you’re going to be intent on capitalizing on this time. Allot a bit over eight hours each day to sleep and personal hygiene, or 58 hours weekly. Next, the actual 110 hours begins.
Starting time: 110 hours.
You may be spending a minimum of 50 hours per week on your full-time employment. What if you merely work 40 hours per week? Chances are you are still spending at least 50 hours per week on your job. I’m not merely referring to the time you spend at your workplace. I’m including the time you spend commuting, the time you spend dressing for work, the time you spend pondering work away from work, and the time you spend decompressing from work. Eradicate your work and all of this time is freed up. If you cherish your work, then congratulations. You have taken care of the biggest slice of time that prevents most people from enjoying their lives and you are already on your way to enjoying life full-time. You might even already be there. Skip to the next segment. If not, then continue reading. Here is the first component of the new 40-10-10-50 work life balance definition.
Reduce time you spend doing all of these job-related actions. Move closer to work. Negotiate a work-from-home or part-time agreement. I’m not suggesting you slack off. I’m advising the opposite: that you be more effective at your work so as to get more done faster and regain time for you to carry out other things that strengthen and enhance your life. I know most people work a minimum of 40 hours a week. In my opinion, 40 hours is the highest amount of time you need to devote to all job-related activities. If you can get away with 30, then do 30. If you don’t really like what you do, your aspiration should be to get down to 40 at the most if you’re not there presently. Everyone needs to earn money by some means and not everybody is able to get it done with WII right off the bat. Suck it up and bust your tail bearing in mind that it’s a temporary gig to endure before you realize the potential to hit the number you really want, which happens to be zero.
Remaining time: 70 hours.
Now that we’ve gotten the boredom taken care of, to the interesting stuff. Set aside 10 hours each week to strengthening or preserving your physical fitness. Allocate two to three hours a week to preparing nutritious meals. Once you learn how to cook efficiently, you shouldn’t need much more time than this. If you have a spouse to do this for you, that’s even better. Allot five hours a week to formal exercise. I like to spend one hour per day each weekday and take the weekends off. The one hour includes time to recover. Once you learn how to exercise efficiently, a 30 to 45 minute session ought to be plenty. In the Physical Fitness section, I introduced you to a monster set of workouts that you can do in only 10 minutes when you’re really tight on time. Allot two or three hours each week to informal exercise. Join a sports league, go climbing, go backpacking, whatever. There are psychological and physical benefits to this.
Remaining time: 60 hours.
Next, set aside 10 hours a week to generating work-independent income (WII). As I pointed out in the previous section, WII is either earning passive income or earning active income working at something you adore. Passive income may very well be reliant on building your capital and that, as you’ve read, needs to be an entirely automated process which means you shouldn’t have to devote any time on that after it is first setup. Consequently, the 10 hours a week really should be spent on educating yourself on methods to earn passive income (i.e. property investing, stock trading, etc.) or on figuring out solutions to earn an active full-time income doing something you love. In other words, spend the 10 hours learning a skill or trade that you enjoy that you can eventually turn into a full-time income instead of spending the 10 hours taking up a second job that you like but that could in no way generate a full-time income.
Remaining time: 50 hours.
Just how much enjoyment does your current work life balance definition provide you with? The Magic Trio gives you a minimum of 50 hours. With the remaining 50 hours, just live your life. Spend more time with the family and friends. Take up a brand new interest or spend more time on your existing ones. Give yourself a taste of what it’s like to live it up full-time. This will do a couple of things. First, it may help get you through the time you may have to temporarily spend doing things you don’t enjoy. Second, it will motivate you to begin enjoying life full-time as soon as possible and reinforce the behaviors you acquire to help you get there. Don’t get too carried away here. Remember, enjoying life is important, but you need to avoid things that may cause you to self-destruct or cause significant barriers in your progress. For instance, DO go out for a couple drinks with your buddies a couple of times a week. DON’T turn into an alcoholic or drug abuser. DO treat yourself to a bit of shopping. DON’T go blow $10,000 on a new wardrobe. Get the idea?