Are you wearing many hats? Here's an idea....

Stephen Covey the author of the famous 7 Habits of Highly Effective people, tells us that everything we do (our tasks, projects, and goals) need to reflect our “Roles’ in life.

Everybody’s roles are of course different and can change over time. It’s a good exercise to sit down and write down what your present main roles are. Mine being, father, husband, son, brother, uncle, business owner, trainer, friend, and member of a geeky games group!

Dealing with overwhelm

To therefore align everything that I’m doing to these roles can take a lot of effort. I can get overwhelmed with the pressure of then needing to ensure I am doing my best in all of these roles. I can start feeling guilty if I’m neglecting one of these roles because time is taken up by another. The classic example for most of us being that your work roles are given much more weight than our family commitments.

My 3 Elements

So this year I have a new simpler (less guilt-ridden) model for optimising my life. And the good news is that it only has 3 elements to remember. Them being: ENERGY, FAMILY, AND SERVICE. The roles are therefore bundled somewhere within these three, and largely within Family (husband, brother etc) and Service (Business, Friend, member of social groups etc).

The Energy element is less of a role, but I see it as the key fundamental to improving the other two. I do break “Energy” down into 3 sub-elements, them being FUEL (Food, Liquid), REST (Sleep, meditation, TV), and MOVEMENT (walking, body strengthening, stretching).

Keep Reviewing

So when I’m doing my weekly review and reflection (usually on a Friday for an hour just after lunch), I simply start with looking at the 3 elements of Energy, Family and Service. Did I get the balance right this week?. If not, why not?, What tasks and projects do I need to change and add to improve each for the week ahead?

It’s easy to neglect the Energy and Family elements and just to focus on the Service, but by thinking in this new way, is probably my best new years resolution. I’ll let you know how it progresses.

Do you have a model for optimising yourself and your roles? If so let me know in the comments.