By David Henzel, co-founder of TaskDrive—we support sales and marketing teams with personalized lead research and outbound campaigns.
To truly be on your A game as a professional, it is important for any top performer to maintain harmony in every aspect of their life. As entrepreneurs, we easily make the time to plan and prioritize our business ventures, but it is just as important to maintain similar principles for our personal lives and the role we play in our community.
There are proven systems that we apply to our work, but many of us don’t apply these structures to other areas of our lives. But these business principles are just as important in guiding us to success as we apply them to other areas of our lives. I know my life has improved significantly since my fitness and personal relationships began to flourish, all because I began to apply business principles to achieve personal mastery in all my roles in life.
Anyone looking for success in business should also hone their self-leadership skills because if you don’t take control of your personal life and health, your work will inevitably suffer. If you are disabled by illness, your business will suffer, and if you don’t spend quality time with your family, which can lead to discord, your professional life will suffer as well. That’s why it’s important for professionals to take a holistic approach by maintaining a healthy and harmonious lifestyle – and keeping it as important as work. And this can be easily managed by applying business principles to this end.
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Know your vision, mission and core values.
So what does it mean to run your life like a business? First and foremost, you need to have a clear vision and mission for your personal life and how you want your relationships to be, as well as a set of core values that you strive to live. These resources alone can help you choose how and where to divide your time, which in other words means it can be the deciding factor in the activities you say yes and no to.
Set personal goals and plan them.
As with any business strategy, it’s important to set your own personal goals and have a roadmap to achieve them so you can plan for them properly. When planning your day or week, block time for achieving your personal goals and make them as important as any professional obligation.
How we appear in our roles in our personal relationships is also an important part of your A-game. Likewise, setting aside quality family time and planning family vacations are some ways that can make your professional life smoother in the long run.
Have systems in place to measure your success.
It’s 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 and measure how much and in what ways you will exercise. This is because in order to actually achieve your personal and relationship goals, you will most likely need to adjust your habits. Whether you’re forming a new one to break an old one or vice versa, measuring it with tools like a habit tracker and having reward milestones can help ease the habit-forming process.
For example, if you want to develop regular running or strength training, block out the time of 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 time to improve your physical state also has benefits that directly affect your professional life.
I used to never make the time to go for a run in the morning, even though I wanted to. I would feel guilty scheduling that personal time instead of professional commitments. But when I made the decision to also prioritize and plan for my health, not only did my fitness improve, but getting a different perspective on things while running allowed me to come up with creative solutions to work problems that I didn’t understand. could have figured out sooner.
I also never planned family outings and only scrambled for last-minute vacations when my wife said she absolutely wanted to. But the thing is, not only did I pay more for the tickets and accommodation and cancel work meetings, but I also deprived my family of the precious anticipation that precedes a trip. But now, by planning travel ahead of time and scheduling work commitments accordingly, my family is happier, the budget is lighter, and my work commitments aren’t disrupted.
Scheduling quality time with the people you care about and blocking time in your schedule when you’re not available for business meetings are other ways to make sure you don’t lose work-life balance.
To close
Aligning the other aspects of your life through systems that work like clockwork can also help you stay on track when roadblocks surface. With the right mindset and your guiding vision, mission and values on deck, you can react and not react when the sea gets rough – because a well-rounded life can give you the right perspective to accept and move on.
Maintaining a positive attitude, strong physical condition and living in harmony with your community all contribute greatly to functioning optimally as a professional. And these qualities can be achieved by applying the methods we know can be successful in our business in a holistic approach to the rest of our lives.
Janice has been with businesskinda for 5 years, writing copy for client websites, blog posts, EDMs and other mediums to engage readers and encourage action. By collaborating with clients, our SEO manager and the wider businesskinda team, Janice seeks to understand an audience before creating memorable, persuasive copy.