Life's a Business: Value-Added Proposition

One way to gain control of your own life and to empower yourself to achieve successful living is by treating your life and everything about it like a business. A lot of people, myself included, spend a large portion of their time on activities that yield no value. For example: Every time I watch TV, I’m really not learning anything and although I’m entertained, I’ve extracted zero long-term value out of that 2 hours of Jack Bauer ripping into necks and breaking heads. Businesses don’t make money when they spend their time on things that don’t add value.

All new businesses start off in a mess, with zero controls and poor management, but with great ideas. Similarly, people in general want to lose 20 lbs, they want to start running 5 km everyday and they want to be at the top of their class, but sadly most people don’t really know where to start or they simply lack the drive. Any business has four functions: operations, marketing, financials and human resources. Success in every element is crucial to the longevity and ultimately financial upside of any business.

Operations:
The fundamental element of any business as well as personal success.
· Think about time: A normal week has 168 hours. Assuming you sleep 8 hours a day. That leaves 112 awake hours. Now assume you need to eat and groom. Being extremely generous, lets say it takes 2 hours a day, which equals 14. Which leaves 98 awake hours. If you’re an arts student you’re in class 20 hours a week. That leaves 78 hours. If you’re an engineering student or working you’re doing that for 40 hours a week. That leaves 58 hours a week to do learn something new.

· The point is that you have so much free time you can work another job or go to another school. This is all money making time, single moms know it, so should you.

· Adding Value: If you’re not spending time making money, you should be spending time on activities that yield money or other returns (wink wink, nudge nudge). So you analyze your week and realize you spend 2 hours riding a bus everyday. Go to your library and take out some books and read for those two hours while riding it. You run everyday for 30 minutes or drive? Get some audio books.

Taking out the trash: Stop doing activities that don’t add value. Stop watching tv, stop playing video games and stop wasting time. Instead of watching tv learn to play an instrument, instead of playing video games, play some real games outside and get some exercise. Instead of wasting time use it.

Stay tuned for all other functional areas of business.

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