Just how do you spend your waking hours?
People have 168 hours in a week. How you may spend these hours will dictate how successful you are. The Magic Trio describes success as the amount of your lifetime you enjoy. Consequently, people who spend more of their total waking hours enjoying life will be the most successful. Until you obtain financial independence, your
definition of work life balance should go something like 40-10-10-50 (hours). I’ll clarify further. 58 hours a week needs to be spent on slumber and personal hygiene. That leaves 110 hours per week for you to spend your time. If you’re working 50 hours each week at a job you despise, you happen to be spending almost 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 might only spend 10 hours a week or less overseeing your work-independent income channels. Assuming you’re also physically fit, then you’re likely enjoying 90% to 100% of your life.
Most people are not at 90%.
If you’re not there yet, you ought to do something to ensure you get there. This means making time to transform your life while keeping up with your current obligations. As you will notice, personal time management becomes a crucial ability to obtain. Time management is extremely important to enjoying life full-time because unless you are able to make enough time to take regular actions, enjoying life full-time will always be a dream that’s out of reach. After reading this book, you will see how you can operate efficiently so these regular action steps will not take up a significant amount of your time, but you will still need to make some time. How should you spend your waking hours? The Magic Trio work life balance definition starts at 40-10-10-50, but if you do it correctly, it will finish up at 0-10-10-90. Next, I’ll provide you with a hypothetical breakdown of how I would do things, assuming you’re an adult with a full-time career that supports your current lifestyle.
Weekly time: 168 hours.
You need to 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 states “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”, you may be sleeping much earlier than you’d like. Allocate at least seven hours every night to good quality sleep. You may not be able to do this every night, however, if you don’t get enough one evening, then make an effort to compensate for it the following night. This may seem odd, but make sleep a target similar to other things you desire to attain. I shoot for 50 hours per week. Trust me, your body will appreciate it and you’ll have more energy through the remaining hours of the week which you will absolutely need if you’re going to be focused on taking advantage of this time. Allot a bit over eight hours each day to sleep and personal hygiene, or 58 hours per week. After this, the 110 hours begins.
Starting time: 110 hours.
You might be spending a minimum of 50 hours a week on your full-time employment. What if you only work 40 hours a week? Chances are you are still investing at least 50 hours per week on your job. I’m not just talking about the time you may spend at your workplace. I’m including the time spent commuting, time spent dressing for work, time you spend thinking about work outside of work, and the time you may spend decompressing from work. Remove your employment and all of this time is freed up. If you love your employment, then congrats. You have taken care of the largest slice of time that prevents many 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 section. If not, then please read on. Here is the first element of the new 40-10-10-50 work life balance definition.
Reduce the time you spend doing all these job-related activities. Move nearer to work. Negotiate a work-from-home or part-time agreement. I’m not suggesting you let up. I’m suggesting the opposite: that you become more productive at your job so that you can get more tasks completed faster and free up time for you to carry out other things that improve and enhance your life. I recognize most people work more than 40 hours a week. In my opinion, 40 hours is the max length of time you should spend on all job-related activities. If you can get away with 30, then do 30. If you don’t love what you do, then your ambition should be to get down to 40 at the most if you’re not there already. Everyone needs to earn money by some means and not everybody can do it with WII right from the start. Suck it up and bust your tail keeping in mind that it’s a short-term gig to endure until you realize the opportunity to get to the number you truly want, which is nil.
Remaining time: 70 hours.
Now that we’ve gotten the drudgery taken care of, on to the exciting material. Allot 10 hours weekly to strengthening or preserving your physical fitness. Allot two to three hours a week to preparing nutritious meals. Once you learn how to cook efficiently, you shouldn’t need any more time than this. If you have a spouse to make this happen for you, that’s even better. Set aside five hours a week to formal physical exercise. I like to spend one hour a day each weekday and take the weekends off. The one hour includes time to recover. 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 that can be done in only 10 minutes when you’re really tight on time. Set aside two or three hours each week to informal exercise. Join a sports league, go climbing, go walking, whatever. There are psychological and physical benefits to this.
Remaining time: 60 hours.
Next, reserve 10 hours a week to generating work-independent income (WII). As I discussed in the last section, WII is either making passive income or earning active income working at something you like. Passive income may very well be dependent on building your capital and that, as you’ve read, must be a fully automatic process which means you shouldn’t have to devote any time on that after preliminary setup. Thus, the 10 hours per week needs to be invested in educating yourself on approaches to make passive income (i.e. real estate, trading, etc.) or on figuring out ways to earn an active full-time income doing something you’re keen on. In other words, spend the 10 hours learning a skill or trade that you really enjoy and you can ultimately turn into a full-time income rather then spending the 10 hours taking on a second job that you love but that could in no way produce a full-time income.
Leftover time: 50 hours.
How much pleasure does your current work life balance definition give you? The Magic Trio gives you a minimum of 50 hours. With the remaining 50 hours, simply enjoy your life. Spend more time with your family and friends. Take up a brand new hobby 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 might have to temporarily spend doing stuff you don’t enjoy. Second, it will inspire you to start enjoying life full-time as soon as possible and bolster 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 will cause you to self-destruct or cause significant barriers in your progress. For example, DO go out for a couple drinks with your buddies once or twice 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 concept?