FROM THE BOOK "THE 100 YEAR LIFESTYLE"
by Dr. Eric Plasker
THE QUALITYTIME LIVING MODEL
To achieve the optimal 100-Year Lifestyle, start by dividing your life up into three different realms:
Prime time:
This is about production. It is the time you designate to produce results, utilize your skills, and apply talents to generate value in the greater world. This is all about working in your professional life or for your favorite cause, and it is a very important part of keeping you sharp, purposeful, and productive.
Prep time:
This is about organization and strategic planning. This is the time that you plan, organize, do research, and lay the groundwork for superb prime times and fabulous play times.
Play time:
This is the free time you spend reading, getting massages, playing golf, doing yoga, traveling, going on hikes with your family, and taking vacations.
I remember when I first opened my training company and began teaching this time model to doctors. They were blown away by how much more focused they were with their patients. They started to take more vacations, play time, and found that adding this balance to their lives improved their personal relationships and made their lives more fun.
The challenge for me was that our company grew so fast that I lost myself in the process and got off track with my own prime time, prep time, and play time. While I had mastered this time model in my practice, I had not yet figured out how to apply it to my new life. By disciplining myself to abide by my own prime, prep, and play time model, I was able to get back on track when I reconnected to "my life, my minutes."
When you run yourself ragged, just trying to keep up with the demands of your current job—and your present-day life—you are essentially treading water. Every day at work, you are learning new skills, sharpening existing skills, and gaining new perspective on how to do things better. Unfortunately many of us aren't taking the time to process the information and get ahead of the game. We are always playing catch up. It's like we're eating a meal and then frantically moving on to the next meal without taking time to digest. We meet demand after demand, just they will be 100 percent devoted to one thing or another. You may spend 80 to 90 percent of your day in prime time on a prime time day, for example, and then 20 percent on prep time. But in general, you want to make it a complete prime time, result-oriented day. If you are working in a job in which you don't have as much control, try to set up your schedule so that your prime time matches your supervisor's or company's prime time.
PRIME TIME
Prime time days are about generating results, building relationships, or generating money—to use your talents and abilities in more effective ways to create value in the world. That value will generate the money to finance your 100-Year Lifestyle. But don't do things just for the money. Do things you love to do and formulate them into a business model that finances your 100-Year Lifestyle. As you generate money, decide in your prep time where to distribute it, so you can move your life in your desired direction. Also, the quality of your prep times will have a tremendous impact on the quality of your prime time and play time. So, let's break it down:
Teacher: Let's say you are a teacher. Your prime time days are when you teach classes. Your prep days are organizing, grading tests, and creating lesson plans.
Writer; If you are a writer, your prime time days are spent writing. Prep time is spent on research.
Salesperson: For a salesperson, prime time is spent in front of customers and potential customers. Prep time is spent on getting ready to spend time with customers, and on organization, reviewing sales numbers, and setting goals.
CEO: If you are a CEO, your prime time may be spent meeting with your board, shareholders, or key customers. Your prep time is spent on planning, delegating to staff, and constructing the future of your company.
Athlete: If you are an athlete, your prime time is the day of the game. Prep time is spent practicing on the field or working out in the gym.
Manager. If you are a manager, prime time is when you meeting with your team to ensure their productivity. Prep time may be spent setting goals, organizing, or researching a new business system.
Entertainer. If you are an entertainer, prime time is the time you spend on the stage or on the television or movie set. Your prep time is spent on rehearsals, makeup, and reading scripts.
In any of these examples, if you don't spend enough time on your prep times, the quality of your prime times will be reduced. If you are a musician and you didn't spend enough time on rehearsal, for example, you probably won't deliver a good performance. Prime time isn't only about execution, however. It is also the time when we nurture our talents. My wife, Lisa, for example, is an incredible photographer and artist. Over the years she cultivated a photographic eye and a passion for art, design, and technology. But for the longest time she wasn't sure where her journey would take her. All of a sudden things came together. Now, during her prime times she has an opportunity to do what she loves—making multimedia masterpieces. Her prime time is on the computer creating masterpieces. Her prep time is spent doing research. You can apply this model of time no matter what you do.
If you fully embrace this model of time, it will radically change your life. One of my clients in Australia recently said to me that after implementing Quality Time Living, he cut his hours from five and a half days a week to three and a half and he focused and improved the quality of the care he provides dramatically while increasing his practice by $360,000 a year. I told him in a joking manner that he should consider going to two days a week.
My yardman listened to some of the audio CDs that I made on this topic and quadrupled his business in two years. You can do the same, and you will have a blast in the process.
On the other hand, another one of my new clients came to see me awhile back. He was burned out. I asked him, "When was the last time you took a vacation?" He said, "It's been ten years." When I asked him how his wife felt about that, he told me he had just gone through a divorce. This is what happens when people spend too much time in prime time. This is a classic, "all work and no play" scenario. It's very draining and leads to fatigue, ill health, being overweight, and broken relationships. Stay in prime time for too long and eventually you can expect some sort of health or relationship crisis to come your way.
For the rest of your life, I would like you to make play time a priority in your lifestyle. You don't have to earn it, prove yourself, or put it off until next year. You deserve it, and play time will come first when you schedule it into your life. So many of us run ourselves into the ground and collapse at the finish line so we can get away for a weeklong vacation, and then go back to work and do it again. Finding the perfect balance of prime, prep, and play time is essential for ensuring a quality of life as you age. When you schedule your life this way, you choose your focus and build momentum.
PREP TIME
Prep days are about organization. They are about preparing for great prime times and great play times. The trick with prep time is that you may not see the results of your work right away because you are laying down the tracks. This is where the discipline comes in to work on your life and business, rather than just be caught up in it. For example, think of a beautiful garden in the middle of summer. When you look around, you see flowers in bloom—red, yellow, pink, and white blossoms. They are fragrant. A butterfly lands on a cluster of strawberries and spreads its wings. The garden is in full bloom, showing its magnificent beauty and producing a sense of abundance.
The days that you are sitting in the garden and enjoying it with your family are play time days. Planning the garden to begin with took place during prep time. Building the garden was the prime time activity. Utilize this triune of time properly and you truly find the balance you can enjoy for a lifetime.
Successful entrepreneurs and businesspeople are masters of prep time. They know that when they set things up the right way, the right things happen. For them, their prep times are spent on developing their business model, marketing, networking, doing interviews, setting goals, researching new technology, and participating in panel discussions. They work on building and nurturing relationships that support their primary businesses. It can take weeks, months, or even years, in some cases, to see the full fruit of their labors in prep time. But when they do the right things, for the right reasons, they can expect to eventually reap the right results. This is the magic of prep time.
[Centenarian Secret Have you ever felt like your days were a hodgepodge of prime, prep, and play blended together? When this happens you will find that you get half as much done in twice the time with quadruple the stress. Quality Time Living is a much better option.]
The risk of prep time is spending too much time on the "doing" without generating production. That is, "pulling the trigger" in prime time. Think about the real estate investor who looks and looks but never buys—-or the doctoral candidate who works on his thesis for years but fails to present. Prep time, for some, becomes a way to avoid risk. This is what I call "Constantly Busy but Not Accomplishing Anything" syndrome. For example, I had a client who was very hard to get on the phone. He always seemed to be busy. In fact, he was one of the busiest guys I'd ever seen. Unfortunately for him, his practice wasn't getting him anywhere but in a state of exhaustion. He never seemed to be able to get over the hump. Eventually, you need to pull the trigger and do the things that generate results.
PLAYTIME
Play time is simply about enjoying your life. On a play time day, you are not busy trying to stay organized. You are doing whatever it is that makes you happy and rejuvenates you—reading a good book at home or on the beach, going for a walk in the woods, spending time with your life partner, traveling to exotic places, and celebrating life. When you look at your schedule for the next 12 months, what I would like you to do is to start blocking off your play time days first. This might seem counterintuitive to what you have always done. Play time first is a key component of the 100-Year Lifestyle. Play time days, however, aren't only for rest and relaxation.
You need play time to cultivate your creativity. Your creativity is ultimately the force behind the exciting and passionate 100-Year Lifestyle you want to enjoy. It will not only be what gets you ahead in this new era, but it will also help you choose new and exciting goals and adventures that you'd like to experience. I'm sure you know there are a million forces at work to ensure you don't take the time to nurture this creativity. The tendency, today, is to push and push—-to keep working day and night and to stay plugged in. Scheduling play time first is about setting boundaries. It is also showing the world, and yourself, that you value your life and your family, and you do so by making them your first priority.
[Centenarian Secret Play time frees up your creativity, creates balance, and frees you from the grind and the intensity of prime time. Play time frees up your energy, relaxes you, balances out your system, and produces a condition of homeostasis—a condition of equilibrium—throughout your mind and body. It is often where your next big thing is born.]
Many people report that the creativity comes out in play time, which is why you need to take it. What's interesting is that when many of us are in a rut, we try to work ourselves out of it and instead we just end up digging it deeper. The way to get out of a rut is to step away and take play time. Life is not just about work. You deserve to enjoy your life. Have fun and lots of it. In fact, since you are going to have more time than you originally thought you would, why not have more fun than you ever dreamed possible.
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YES IT IS AS GOD TEACHES.....BALANCE AND MODERATION IN ALL THINGS. THE ABOVE TOGETHER WITH A HEALTHY DIETY, 8 HOURS SLEEP PER DAY, LITTLE OR NO STRESS, REGULAR BALANCED EXERCISE, YOUR WEIGHT IN CONTROL, ARE THE KEYS TO LIVING A LONG AND HEALTHY LIFE.
LET ME SAY AGAIN, ONE OF THE GREATEST HEALTH AND STRENGTH COURSES YOU CAN TAKE IS THE CHALES ATLAS "HEALTH AND STRENGTH" COURSE. IT IS STILL AVAILABLE FOR ONLY $50. TYPE IN CHALES ATLAS ON YOUR SEARCH ENGINE, AND UP IT WILL COME. WITH THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF MY DAD, I SENT FOR IT AS A YOUNG TEENAGER, AND BEEN FOLLOWING IT EVER SINCE, STILL DOING SOME OF THE EXERCISES IN IT, ON A REGULAR BASIS. THE EXERCISES CAN BE DONE BY WOMEN AS WELL AS MEN. WOMEN....NO YOU WILL NOT DEVELOP MUSCLES [UNLESS YOU FOOLISHLY TAKE STEROIDS OR MALE HORMONES] .... YOU WILL DEVELOP HEALTHY STRENGTH.
Keith Hunt
