(Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia “Management Universe” at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/)
Life Time Model
First and foremost, start building up your life time model- it’s the way you will like to be guided in your life. This model will be your basis for shaping up your value structure, thinking patterns, decision making, objectives or goals, road maps, skills, systems, technology, techniques, tools, tasks and actions etc.
At the core of the model comes your chosen value structure consisting of the fundamental principles that you will like to stick to throughout your life. While you may review these principles and add, delete or modify them, by and large these principles are more permanent than anything else in your life. They are the fundamentals and as you know, fundamentals do not change so very easily. The principles will be not more than 10 to 12 or so in numbers and they will seem extremely simple to articulate. Its another matter that at times these may start looking tough to follow. Tough they may be, yet, you need to be guided by them and not waver if you wish to lead an enriched life.
Some examples of these fundamental values or principles are (this is only an indicative list and not necessarily comprehensive):
- I will speak truth.
- I will not hurt or exploit myself and others emotionally and physically.
- I will respect myself and everyone else.
- I will not indulge in corrupt practices.
- I will love my wife, children, parents, brothers and sisters unconditionally.
- I will perform my professional activities as per the profession’s requirements and values.
Next come the major choices of your life: choice of your branch(es) of education and profession(s), choice of your spouse, choice of the geographical places where you will like spend most of your life, number of children you will like to have, choices of educational and career opportunities for your spouse and children, choice of manner(s) in which you will like to look after your parents in their old age, choice of house(s) you will like to live in etc.
Around the above-mentioned cores, you can now start setting up your life time goals. You may also look into your immediate goals, short term goals, medium term goals and long term goals. As you start moving towards achievement of your goals, you may feel like revising your goals and that is perfectly OK. You will have to work out your goals for your personal, family, professional and social life. The goals will have to be achieved on a time line. Your goals need to be quantified as much as possible and should be measurable so that at any point in time you can check back if you are moving ahead towards achieving your goals as desired.
Goal achievement will demand that you decide on the tasks and activities that need to performed by you and others. You will like to outsource certain tasks and activities and you may like to do certain of them by yourself. Accordingly, you will have to acquire the required and necessary knowledge and competencies/skills.
Along side you may have to decide on the selection and use of appropriate systems, technology, techniques and tools. These may consist of hardware and software. You will have to acquire necessary knowledge and skills to get the best results out of these.
The above-mentioned description allows you to construct a life time model that specifically suits you. There is no generic solution for such a model.
