Being your best

You want to give your best to your clients. I encourage you to consider your off time as part of your time management.  It helps to support your well being to be your best. For Principals, the process of being a business owner is can be draining at times with all of the roles you have to play.  Protecting your well-being with effective time management is one of the most important elements of success.  We all only have 168 hours in the week and we can only contribute to our work with the energy we have available.  If an entrepreneur takes on too much too fast or spreads themselves too thin, it's a surefire path to burn out. With discount traders being commonplace today, your clients aren't coming to you because you're the only way they can invest their savings, they are coming to you because of the relationship.  You are their trusted advisor who shares wisdom with them.  They know they're doing a better job because they have you involved.  You improve not just their daily lives but give them security that they are protecting their future.

Work-Life Balance

In part 2 of this episode Sophia and I delve into how we maintain our work-life balance and keep ourselves sharp. One huge place we a drain on our well being is both how every app on our phone notifies us of something every few minutes but also our collective knee jerk grab for our cell-phones.  These habits take away a part of life that has been commonplace for previous generations. By trying to not "optimize" her time, Sophia has found both a deeper sense of peace as well as realizing how much thought occurs during these quiet moments.  Rather than letting twitter take over the hour before bed she encourages the quiet moments to do high-level processing and allowing "backburner" thoughts to have some time and find answers. Sophia shares some steps she's taken to declutter her mind by a few simple changes in behavior. Check out E14 | How to be a Smart Financial Planner.  Ron Seir teaches about brain-body balance.  In the 21st century, allowing time to recharge is part of an entrepreneur's work regimen. Another related episode is E18 where Rianka shares her time management strategies.

Time for something completely different

Another core element of off time management is studying something completely different than what you know.  Spending time on athletics, music, reading, or whatever you fancy can provide insights to take back to your practice.

"I needed more time to recharge... I was using all of this low level amount of energy in social media or working late at night." ~Sophia Bera, CFP®

And make sure to listen till the end of the show, where I make some announcements about a new podcasting project for Financial Planning 3.0. If you missed part 1 of our conversation, you can find it here.