Undoubtedly Money is the most prioritised resource for most of us and special care is taken while investing it. It does not require much thinking to decide where to invest money. The most obvious strategy being to invest where it gives the maximum returns. We try our best to invest our money in the right place and at the right so as to get the best returns on it.
Now, let me shift the context to the most crucial aspect of our existence i.e. our LIFE. How many times have we given a thought to the investments that will maximise the returns on our life and enable us to live a more fulfilling life ? I am sure most of us have not even thought about it ever. We just seem to be crawling along and satisfied with whatever comes our way.
In the wake of the decreasing human attention span (which is about 8 seconds), "minimum attention, maximum retention" seems to be the only mantra that most of us swear by and live by in today's time. We live with the principle of extracting the maximum output from the input but this principle aids our growth and development only when we have a clarity about the "inputs". Apart from money, what are those other "essential resources" that impact our life considerably in terms of success and growth ? It's not easy to identify the other "resources" from the plethora that we confront every day but here, in this post, i cover 4 such resources that abide by the basic principle of "minimising-maximising" of the times. These 4 resources could prove to be a good investment if handled with care and caution (wisely). Let's discuss these four crucial investments that can turn around our lives for good.
- EMOTIONS : Emotions are the bedrock of a complete/ whole personality. Whether it's about ensuring a holistic personality, creating balance in life, excelling at work or building strong relationships, emotions play a crucial role. Investing emotions wisely can help us prevent spiralling downwards in life during crucial events and situations. Imagine getting into a regrettable relationship and wasting crucial years/ period of your life without any gain/ growth/ stability whatsover. Emotions work on the concept of "attachment or bond(ing)". The more attached we feel towards something (person, product, situation, etc.), the more emotions we invest into the thing. An emotionally disturbed person can never take rational decisions and also becomes very tentative in approach towards life. This leads to drop in confidence and esteem which directly impacts the personality of the individual. So, be wary of where you invest your emotions.
- ENERGY : If momentum is what maintains consistency towards success in our life, then energy is what builds up that momentum. Most of the times, its that surge, that burst of energy that spurs us for unabated action when faced with the likelihood of giving up in life. If we can manage to direct/ redirect our energy at the right moment towards the right task, then we can be assured of accomplishing our goals in a timely manner. So, when it comes to investing your energy, be careful about expending it on the right areas/ tasks/ activity and at the appropriate moment so that it yields the best results. Never let go of any opportunity for the lack of desired energy that may be needed to complete the task. While running the sprint, its the final burst of energy that decides the winner between/ among the sprinters running neck to neck. There have been so many instances in the sprint world when the winner was decided on the basis of fraction of second. The runner who put in that required energy in time came out triumph. So, be like the sprinter and be ready for the "burst" when the need arises.
- FOCUS : One of the big paradox that we are living today is that of FOCUS. The more we lose it, the more we demand it. Surrounded and bombarded with umpteen distraction, we just can't seem to pay sufficient attention to the things that demand it. With constant dwindling of human attention span, the resource of "Focus" had become more crucial in our lives and gradually moving towards becoming a "rare commodity". The market boasts of many tools and practices (based on the concept of Mindfulness is one such example) aimed at improving focus and attention span. Few examples of the same are Mindfulness, Pomodoro and TimeBoxing The best strategy to derive the maximum return from FOCUS lies in "monotasking" instead of multi-tasking and paying our full attention to the task till its completion.
- TIME : Everything in our life, whether work, relationship or self-growth consumes a part of our time. But being a perishable resource, we can only give a portion of our time to each of the item and if we get the time allocation wrong, it takes us many steps backward in life and leave us with many unfulfilled tasks and things. The "limited (in quantity)" nature of Time makes it imperative that we make the optimum use of time available to us and the best way to do so is to imbibe the practice of Prioritisation in our approach to work and life. We will always have plenty of things seeking our attention but the moment we gain clarity about the sequence to invest our time is when we extract the best from our investment in time. Few techniques that can help us in this regard are Pareto Principle, Eisenhower Matrix
Remember, success and happiness in our life will always accrue from making the right investments !
