Map out a budget – for your life
It’s always around this time that we begin to feel the weight of the year. As the workload accelerates in the final months leading up to the holidays, it’s common for feelings of fatigue to creep in.
One way to hit refresh is to create a life plan to help you feel more in control, and to provide a clear path to achieving the things you really want. In turn, it will help you to motivate yourself to take the steps you need to avoid stress and burnout.
The process is quite simple, you just need to map out a few hours for yourself to really think about what you want for the rest of your year. Don’t look back at what has already happened, instead think about the various facets of your life that are important to you and what you’d really like to achieve in each area. Next, create a document and jot down your goals in each category – they could be your health, family, community, career, spiritual or even ways in which you’d like to contribute to the world.
Indeed.com recommends that your life plan include the following:
1. Create a vision. Allow yourself to dream big,
2. Perform a self-assessment. To perform a thorough life assessment, you need to be honest with yourself and what you want,
3. Prioritize your life,
4. Identify your values,
5. Establish goals,
6. Outline an action plan.
Then it’s time to get real about how you spend your time. If your goal is to spend quality time with your family, but you spend half your evenings at business functions, you are going to need to learn to say no while finding ways to maintain your work relationships by, for example, making batch calls on one afternoon a week, or sending a thoughtful email.
By prioritising what really matters, a life plan helps you to measure your options against your goals and values before making a decision so that you always choose the option that is best aligned to what you want to achieve – and ensuring that you use your time and energy wisely.
I’m looking forward to mapping my life budget. Hope you are too.
Michelle Frenzel - Human Resources Manager - KYOCERA Document Soutions South Africa
