A few hours ago, I had a one-on-one with Will, a leader of a large financial company. Will and his team signed up for the Work Smarter, Live Better journey three months ago. And since then, we’ve done really intensive work on challenging and changing some of their work habits in the office.
Funnily enough, this last meeting was not at all about business. The only thing we spoke about was personal life, particularly personal priorities.
And this is actually very common.
When I work with leaders, we often start by talking about their business life and their business priorities. But in the end, we end up talking more about their personal priorities.
What always surprises me is how much effort we put into thinking about and planning our business life — we have strategies, KPIs, reviews, and project management – and how little effort we put into planning our personal life.
Bonjour. In this video, I want to share one simple process that can really make a difference in your business.
There’s a very interesting book called Four Thousand Weeks. And it mentioned that 4000 weeks is, on average, the number of weeks we have available in our lives. You can even go on their website, fourthousandweeks.com, and order a poster where you can see just how many weeks you have left in your life – I think it’s quite an interesting one.
For me, thinking about my personal priorities is so important. That’s why every quarter, I write down what my priorities are for that quarter – both personal and business.
I really suggest that you do the same. Spend a bit of time and ask yourself:
For the next three months, what are my two or three personal and business priorities? What are the two or three things that will have the biggest long-term impact in my life if I really focused on them?
Write it down.
I also do what I call a ‘Compass Plan’, which is a quarterly plan that’s really detailed. So, for this quarter, one of the plans I wrote down has to do with spending more quality time with my loved ones. That’s why I really thought about how I can organise my schedule this quarter.
So, today is Wednesday, and I’m actually in a beautiful reserve at the moment. I blocked most of my afternoon in advance because I wanted to spend some time with Mirabelle and support her in her football game.
So, my question: What do you do to clarify your personal priorities?
This planning process is a really worthwhile process that we go through every quarter with all our clients.
This is this week’s Work Smarter, Live Better tip. I hope you enjoyed it.
A bientôt,
Cyril
