Life Asa Business

LifeAsaBusiness advocates treating Life as a Business, instead of treating Business/Career/Employment as Life.

How does the above relate to this Page? Maybe thinking in terms of MoneyOrientedProgrammers?

Created Feb2004 for CategoryCareerEmploymentAndLifeStrategies.

Now I know that Apocalypse is here. Good grief, this was my problem with The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Life as a business would mean that only relationships that add to my net wealth are worth having, and only those activities that add to my bottom line are worth doing, and also I must efficiently schedule all waking time (sleep! Note to self - see if snoozing can be outsourced) for profit. Sounds absolutely joyful. However, it occurs to me that if I could just sell shares in myself for enough money... -- DonOlson

Actually, this isn't an all-bad outlook, as long as you judge your life in terms of value to you, which is emphatically not isomorphic to money. Your (mis-?)interpretation is common, understanding it as "Should I spend time with my family when I could instead make an hour's wage?" But the question turns around just as well: "Shouldn't I be spending time with my family when all another hour of work will net me is an hour's wage?" If you think your time with your family is more valuable then that hour's wage, then act on it already.

It is also a good idea to periodically question your activities: Is this hobby bringing value to you, or is it just habit now? This applies to "programming" as well as "smoking". Is there something you could be doing instead to bring more value to you?

Of course, if you value only money, then you'll end up with a life that reflects that value. But even though many people claim to value certain things, their actions rarely reflect those values. Taking a more business-like look at life, with your personal values standing in for "money", can be an eye-opening experience. Personally, I find it leads to me taking more time off, and in the end, to less stress overall, because my values are much more in harmony with my actions since I started thinking this way.

(Of course, the main flaw with this is that most people have a hard time thinking in true economic terms. It isn't the case that if I value time with my family more then another hour's wage, that I should quit my job and stop working entirely; you must take into account the fact that working one hour less has vastly differening consequences then not working at all, it's not a simple comparision. Still, I find this helpful in balancing.)

Epitaph -- "I wish I had spent more time at the office." -- AuthorUnknown

I suppose the above contributor has taken LifeAsaBusiness in an unintended direction. I know the person who created the parent page of this one had in mind things are slightly different. But all is not lost.

We just have to rethink and do an AbStraction of wealth. Follow up on the theme of Time in LifeLine I would say LifeTime is the wealth to be applied with extreme care. Eventually this wealth will be depleted, but it may be useful to think the MeaningOfLife is on how much humanity can be achieved (for both the person and society) with this limited and depleting wealth.

We should be able to manage our lives better, even for those of us without employment nor career concerns. We have SixThinkingHats.

Guilty as charged. If I have understood this correctly, you are advocating the use of a consistent regimen across one's life, so that one's life doesn't become chaotic and directionless while one's "business life" seems to march on with apparent purpose.

Said differently, since "career" is a subset of "life-as-a-whole" don't be less diligent managing life than you are with your career ... if I have grasped your meaning? -- GarryHamilton

For adults, life other than career and employment has many important aspects. For many parenting is one such dimension, although some have taken parenting as a career too. Another facet is interaction with rest of humanity, an area often insufficiently attended to by IT people.

Career can be a profession. Or an area a person seek to have important (to the person) achievements in life. An artist (career) can have a profession of running a small café (job and employment as the small business owner).

Life outside of a career often has little importance to other people, but is essential to maintaining HighSpirits? and enhance resilience in times of adversity.

I am going to make a change in the root page of CategoryCareerEmploymentAndLifeStrategies and solicit comments from the wiki community regarding the interaction between Job, Career and Life. -- dl

Not it is not. See AllOrNothingHiring.

I do not get it. How does AllOrNothingHiring invalidates the notion LifeAsaBusiness can be a useful addition to LifePatterns? -- dl

I came across CostOfMoney and my mind went off at a tangent. I start to think adult life starts with a finite wealth, and in financial terms it is called capital. Capital gone, your business (life) gone. Capital can be borrowed, analogy in life is learning. What do you choose to learn is a case of capital project evaluation.

There is always a CostOfCapital consideration in it.

See LifeLine's discussion on TimeLine. A good capital investment gets you more free time in your LifeTime.

-- dl