The New Work Life Balance Definition
February 20, 2012
How do you spend your waking hours?
Each person has 168 hours in a week. How you spend these hours will dictate how successful you will be. The Magic Trio defines success as how much of your lifetime you love. Thus, individuals who spend more of their waking hours enjoying life will be most successful. Until you get financial independence, your definition of work life balance should go something like 40-10-10-50 (hours). I’ll explain further. 58 hours a week needs to be devoted to sleep and personal hygiene. That leaves 110 hours per week for you to spend your time. If you are working 50 hours weekly at a job you hate, you are spending nearly 50% of your waking hours not taking pleasure in your life. If this is actually the case, then you’re not successful. If you’re financially independent, you might only spend 10 hours per week or fewer managing your work-independent income streams. Presuming you’re also in good physical shape, then you’re probably enjoying 90% to 100% of your life.
Most people are not at 90%.
If you’re not there yet, you need to do something to ensure you get there. This means making time to transform your life whilst keeping up with your current responsibilities. As you can see, effective time management becomes a necessary skill to have. Time management is paramount to enjoying life full-time mainly because unless you are able to make time to take consistent action, enjoying life full-time will almost always be a fantasy that’s unrealistic. After reading this guide, you will learn how you can operate effectively to ensure that these continuous action steps are not going to take up a tremendous amount of time, however you will still need to make some time. How should you spend your waking hours? The Magic Trio work life balance definition begins at 40-10-10-50, however, if you do it the right way, it will finish up at 0-10-10-90. Next, I’ll provide you with a theoretical breakdown of how I would do things, presuming you’re an adult with a full-time occupation that sustains your current lifestyle.
Weekly time: 168 hours.
You ought to be sleeping no less than seven hours each day. Sleep is a really underrated element of a healthy and happy lifestyle. If you are one of those folks who states “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”, you may be sleeping much sooner than you’d like. Allocate a minimum of seven hours nightly to good quality sleep. You will not be able to do this every single night, but if you don’t get enough one evening, then make an effort to compensate for it the following night. This sounds strange, but make sleeping a goal just like other things you desire to accomplish. I shoot for 50 hours a week. Trust me, your body will appreciate it you’ll also find more vitality throughout the remaining hours of the week which you’ll require if you’re going to be intent on making the most of this time. Set aside a little over eight hours a day to sleep and personal hygiene, or 58 hours weekly. After that, the actual 110 hours begins.
Starting time: 110 hours.
You are probably spending at least 50 hours a week on your full-time job. What if you only work 40 hours a week? Chances are you are still investing at least 50 hours a week on your job. I’m not merely referring to the time you spend in the office. I’m including the time you spend driving, the time spent getting dressed for work, time you spend thinking about work outside of work, and also the time you may spend decompressing from work. Remove your work and all of this time is freed up. If you cherish your employment, then congrats. You have taken care of the largest chunk of time that keeps most people from enjoying their lives and you’re already on the way to enjoying life full-time. You may even already be there. Skip to the next segment. If not, then keep reading. Here is the first part of the new 40-10-10-50 work life balance definition.
Minimize time you spend doing all of these job-related actions. Move closer to work. Bargain a work-from-home or part-time agreement. I’m not implying you let up. I’m recommending the contrary: that you get more productive at your work so that you can get more done faster and release time to carry out other things that improve and enhance your lifestyle. I understand many people work a minimum of 40 hours per week. In my personal opinion, 40 hours is the maximum length of time you ought to spend on all job-related activities. If you can get away with 30, then choose 30. If you don’t love what you do, your ambition must be to get down to 40 at the most if you’re not there already. Everyone must earn money somehow and not everybody can do it with WII right from the start. Suck it up and work hard bearing in mind that it’s a temporary gig to endure until you realize the potential to get to the sum you truly want, which is zero.
Remaining time: 70 hours.
Now that we’ve gotten the drudgery out of the way, to the exciting stuff. Allot 10 hours every week to strengthening or preserving your physical fitness. Allot two to three hours a week to preparing healthy meals. Once you learn how to cook efficiently, you shouldn’t need much more time than this. If you’ve got a spouse to make this happen 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 recovery time. Once you learn 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 workout routines you’re able to 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 mountain climbing, go backpacking, whatever. There are physical and psychological benefits to this.
Remaining time: 60 hours.
Next, reserve 10 hours a week to producing work-independent income (WII). As I discussed in the last section, WII is either generating passive income or making active income doing something you adore. Passive income can be reliant on building your capital and that, as you’ve read, needs to be a fully automatic process which means you shouldn’t have to spend any time on that after preliminary setup. Therefore, the 10 hours a week needs to be invested in educating yourself on methods to earn passive income (i.e. property investing, stock trading, etc.) or on finding out ways to earn an active full-time income doing something you’re keen on. In short, spend the 10 hours learning a skill or trade that you really enjoy that you can eventually turn into a full-time income rather then spending the 10 hours taking on a second job that you love but that could by no means generate a full-time income.
Leftover time: 50 hours.
Just how much enjoyment does your existing work life balance definition give you? The Magic Trio offers you a minimum of 50 hours. With the remaining 50 hours, just enjoy your life. Spend more time with your family and close friends. Take up a 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 will help get you through the time you may have to temporarily spend doing stuff you don’t enjoy. Next, it will motivate you to start enjoying life full-time as soon as possible and reinforce the habits you cultivate to help you get there. Don’t get too carried away here. Remember, enjoying life is important, but you want to avoid things that may cause you to self-destruct or cause major barriers in your progress. For example, DO go out for a few drinks with your buddies once or twice a week. DON’T become an alcoholic or drug addict. DO treat yourself to a bit of shopping. DON’T go blow $10,000 on a new wardrobe. Get the concept?
