Balancing Act

Last week I gave you my formula for making a ton of money without compromising your values. But that doesn’t mean everything will be smooth and easy. You will still have lots of trouble giving time to your other priorities — to your health, to your family and friends, and to your hobbies.

My business life got much better in 1993 when I started to focus on long-term profitability and quality. But I wasn’t able to master my time and get all my other personal goals accomplished until I started writing about personal achievement. That forced me to rethink everything I was doing. And after several years of trying different time-management programs, I finally arrived at a system that allowed me to get everything done that I had neglected for the previous 30 years.

The first big breakthrough came when I accepted the fact that I had to manage my time. Until I did that, I insisted I could do just fine by working late at night and expecting everyone around me to keep up with me and clean up the mess I made along the way.

But when I began to set goals and methodically work on them, I discovered how much time I had been wasting. I was able to double my productivity in a matter of months.

The next big breakthrough came when I recognized the importance of prioritizing my goals. I developed a system — with parts of it borrowed from various experts — that made a huge difference in what I could accomplish. I tweaked this system every chance I got, and it seemed to keep getting better.

It evolved into the system I still use to this day.

If you’d like to try it, you’ll find all the details in my book Automatic Wealth (written under the pen name Michael Masterson). Briefly, you set realistic long-term goals. You then break those goals down into monthly and weekly objectives. And if you find that achieving those short-term objectives is taking longer than you expected, you revise them accordingly.

Thanks to this system, I’ve been able to write two to four books every year, produce several feature-length films, compete in submission wrestling tournaments, write hundreds of poems, and run or help run half a dozen multimillion-dollar businesses. Plus, I have time to play golf and bocce ball and do crossword puzzles and read and take vacations.

I’ve proven that you can make all the money you want and still accomplish all your personal goals. You can do it too.