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Monopoly Money

Photo by Jeff Sanders

Have you ever come home from work and realized that your entire house looks like a dirty high school cafeteria?  You know, dishes on the floor, muddy clothes on the couch, people you’ve never seen before laying on that couch while eating your food.  Well, maybe only part of that scenario fits you, but you know what I mean.  As you walk in the door and witness this catastrophe playing out in front of you, many thoughts run through your mind: How did I let this happen?  Who are these people?  Why didn’t my significant other clean this mess up?

Likewise, have you ever walked into the lobby of a 5 star hotel and noticed that the floor is so sparkling clean you could eat your dinner off the tile?  The lights are bright, the service is friendly, the experience is very relaxing.  You feel right at home.  Well, that’s assuming your home feels like the lobby of a 5 star hotel, and I’ll make the assumption that yours does not.

So what’s the difference?

The inherent difference is that the business has a system and they follow it like clockwork, whereas your living room may have been clean at one point, but that was too long ago to remember.  If your life is anything like mine you are probably too busy to care about having a sparkling clean tile floor and perfectly arranged floral decorations.

But what if your living room could closely resemble the hotel’s lobby, without a lot of effort or money?

That’s the beauty of running your personal life like a business.  In this scenario, you CAN have a clean house when you come home, or have your bills paid automatically, or never have to remember when to take your parakeet to the vet.  The secret is in the system.  Great businesses have a system for everything.  There are rules, plans, checklists, what-if scenarios, handbooks, guidelines, backup plans, backups for the backup plans, etc.  That 5 star hotel definitely has staff in charge of cleaning their lobby and a florist whose sole job is to replenish the vases with fresh flowers whenever needed.

So how can you get started today?  I thought you would ask that.

1. The easiest way is to have a schedule for everything.  I use iCal on my mac for events, but you can use any calendar program as long as you have a systematized way of organizing every major activity in your life.  Literally, I mean everything from how long you eat breakfast, followed by your morning commute, work, lunch, more work, driving home, dinner, evening activities, exercise, tv shows, sleep, and all the little details in between.

2. Secondly, you’ll need daily, weekly, monthly, and annual goals to keep you on target for all the things you want to accomplish in any time period.  Having goals and setting deadlines for yourself is the only surefire way you will ever complete anything you tend to procrastinate.

3. Learn to outsource everything!  I don’t just mean hiring people from India to answer your phone calls.  I mean analyzing your life from top to bottom and finding tasks you complete yourself that could cheaply and easily be handled by someone else.  This could be as simple as hiring a maid to clean your house once a week.  Hire a dry cleaning service to pick up your clothes and deliver them to the office freshly pressed.  Hire a Virtual Assistant in the Philippines to check your email for you and only forward you the important stuff.  Sound crazy?  I know a guy that outsourced his love life by having his Virtual Assistant compare his profile to potential matches on dating sites and hooked him up with the best women in his city!

These are only a few ideas to get you started.  My goal was to get you thinking by comparing successful business to your own life.  As you begin to think about your own life you will soon see that it truly is the same as a business, many repetitive tasks that when properly handled, free up a lot of your time to spend with family, enjoy your hobbies, have a little fun once a while, sleep!  You get the picture

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Don’t forget to check out my new revolutionary eBook for conquering life after college!

The Clueless Graduate,

Jeff & Tessa Sanders

Jeff Sanders


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