Why the Title, How to Manage Your Monkey?
In reality, most of us have many
monkeys on our backs and just plain do not know how to deal with them. There are so many monkeys; we really do not
know where to start. This course is all
about getting all of those monkeys under control and developing a plan to
handle all of them.
Some of the monkeys you may run into
are spiritual monkeys, emotional monkeys, financial monkeys, family monkeys,
and a whole host of others. Many of
these monkeys work together to drive you crazy.
The way to get these monkeys under
control is to take them one at a time to start with and then work as a group
once you get the ball rolling.
There is an age-old adage that asks,
“How do you eat an elephant?” The answer
is, “One bite at a time”. This is how
you should go about handling your monkeys.
Choose an area that needs work and take it “one bite at a time”.
In the Autobiography of
Benjamin Franklin, Franklin discusses how he chose
thirteen different areas of his life that he wished to improve. He would take one area of his life he wished
to improve and focus on it for one full week.
Then, he would move to the next area.
By choosing thirteen areas of his life, he could focus on each area four
times per year, once each quarter. In
time, he saw drastic improvements throughout his life.
We whole-heartedly suggest reading the Autobiography of
Benjamin Franklin early in this course. You can obtain the eBook free from Amazon in
the Kindle Format or you may wish to read it free from the Gutenberg
Library.
Throughout this text and many of the suggested
readings, we find a concept discussed called “Life Balance”. Even though we may use this term in this
course, it is really sort of a misnomer.
If something is balanced, things are in equal proportions. There may be some things in our life that
demand more attention than others.
Some would say that we should spend more time working
and less time on family life and recreation.
That is just backwards. Work will
always be there. In fact, at least one
company has suggested that by shortening the workday, they get more
productivity out of their workers[i].
Instead of life balance, life is really like a
recipe. You don’t normally have equal
amounts of all ingredients. You usually
have a certain amount of each ingredient, but normally all of these ingredients
will not go into the dish in equal amounts.
What kind of cake would we have if it had 2 cups of
flour, 2 cups of sugar, 2 cups of baking powder, 2 cups of salt, 2 cups of
vanilla, and maybe 2 cups of eggs? It
probably would not come out of the oven looking or tasting much like a cake at
all.
Therefore, instead of the term Life Balance, from this
point forward, we will try to use the term “Life Recipe”.
[i]
CFO Magazine July 2016 www.cfo.com Human
Capital Productive Idea: A Five Hour Workday?
By David McCann Pages 20-21
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