Bonjour, this is Cyril from Work Smarter: Live Better.
In this video, I want to share a few simple principles that I have made a huge difference in my life.
I am in Aore, a beautiful, small island lost in the middle of a country called Vanuatu. Vanuatu is in the Pacific. We are very lucky in Australia because in our back garden, about two or three hours from Sydney, you can take a flight and go to these amazing islands: The Fiji, the Samoa, the Tonga. Vanuatu is one of my favourites. Completely lost in the middle of nowhere. You can see in the background the reef here. Every day with my wife Toni and the kids, we jump here. We’ve seen so many beautiful fish, coral. It’s just amazing.
Now, why am I showing you this? Let me have a little seat on this little tree here.
Why am I showing you this? Because I think your personal life deserve the same amount of focus and attention and planning as your business life. I’m always very surprised when I talk to my clients, corporate leaders in big businesses. They put a lot of emphasizes on planning and thinking on the business side. Most company today have a strategy, a plan,. Most people have KPIs. And then I ask them a very simple question:
“Well, do you do the same thing on your personal life?
Do you do the same amount of planning, thinking?
Do you have goals?
Do you do quarterly reviews?
Do you do weekly review?”
Most people say, “No, actually I don’t.”
Let me ask you a question. On your deathbed, what would be most important, the focus that you had on your business life or the focus that you had on your personal life?
I think for most people the answer is obvious. Yet we do not spend the time to do this. My advice on this one is very simple: Apply the same rigor, apply the same discipline to your personal life that you have in your business life.
I have long-term life goals. One of them is what I call quality time and adventure with my loved one. That’s one of my life goals. On my deathbed, I want to be able to say I have spent lots of quality time and adventure with the people that I love: my kids, my wife, my family, my close friends. That’s really important for me.
Every year I write down a document called ‘My Life In’: My Life in 2017, 2018, 2019. Then every quarter I do a personal compass plan. The compass plan is this: What are my top personal priorities, my top two or three priorities for this quarter? I really write down my personal plan for the quarter. Every week I do a weekly plan. In my weekly plan I think about what I need to do to advance these priorities. Every day I follow what I have planned.
For example, with Toni, this year we decided that we wanted to have an amazing break in a Pacific island with the family. Last quarter we actually started putting that as a priority to really plan it. We spent a lot of time thinking where we wanted to go, what we wanted to do. And we booked meetings with ourselves to organise.
It sound really simplistic, but it’s so important, it makes such a difference. The result is this. The result is today we can enjoy those ten amazing days as a family.
This is this week Work Smarter: Live Better tip. The tip is simple: apply the same rigor, focus, attention to your personal life, the same planning, the same goal vision to your personal life that you do in your business life. It will transform your life.
Hope you enjoyed it. See you very soon.
Cheers!
