Takeaways from this Blog:
- Why 5 AT A TIME is an import read
- How using 5 AT A TIME as a 5-year Life and Career Planning Guide can increase your ROL (Return on Life)
- The importance of integrating 5-year planning with spouse or partner and family
- The “S Curve of Life and Career”
Let’s talk about “repurposing and climbing the Second Mountain”
5 AT A TIME was written as a Leadership Self-help Planning Guide for Life and Career, with readers and adapters being individuals playing different holes of their life, as well as Corporate, Small Business, and Networking Groups these individuals might work or participate in. I would also like to think that 5 AT A TIME has a motivational leadership message that might make it good blog and workshop material for a Corporate, Small Business, and Networking Groups just based on word of mouth and our growing line up of testimonials supporting 5 AT A TIME as a good topic of conversation.
The three primary benefits from reading, discussing, and using the 5 AT A TIME planning process are:
It is a conscious way to layout a life and career plan, with metrics, over however many more Holes of Life you have left to play. Anticipating good holes and some hazards to overcome along the way, you can build a plan for life and career renewable every 5 years, that will guarantee a significant increase in your ROL (Return on Life). Life is an “S Curve, with peaks and valleys”, and a good 5- year plan will help you keep your head up, anticipate challenges and problems, come up with solutions or pivots that you had already thought through, and allow you to keep climbing.
Good planning techniques can help you turn Problems into Opportunities—anticipating problems or hazards, building contingency plans in advance of the event covering monetary and emotional consequences, can make adjustments to your life and career plan smoother, less stressful, and good for your overall health. People who plan life and career 5-years at a time, will live happier and longer lives.
5 AT A TIME life and career planning, like golf, is an individual sport, but great value can be gained by using it as a Group Training Tool:
a) integrating with your leadership team if you have your own business
b) matching key aspects with your employer’s mission statement to make you a more productive Team Leader and employee
c) laying out your 5- year plans alongside your spouse or partner’s plans to see if there is synergy, friction, or conflict
d) most of all encourage your children and young people you mentor at school or in other social groups, to get started with 5 AT A TIME planning on the earliest possible hole of life for maximum ROL
The “S Curve of Life and Career” is a real phenomenon. On a golf course there are hills and valleys, twists and turns, many dog-legs, trees that can block your shot, and sand traps that require skill, not just a blast, to get out of. You will find the analogy for each of these course challenges in life. You may get stuck in some of these situations by your own doing and in other cases you will be surprised or blindsided. You will certainly see these challenging situations over the course of several holes and even with the best of plans probably within one or more actual 5-year hole of life.
There are four types of plans we should think about when we get into detailed 5-year life and career planning:
Strategic (the master plan), tactical (the marketing or growth plan), operational (the budget and the work processes to support the strategic and tactical plans), and contingency (“the what if this or that happens and how do I plan to react”). Strategic, tactical, operational plans may be expressed by listing goals, most of which can be quantified including the budget, but contingency planning is different. The contingency plan is a list of possibilities or events, some not much fun to talk about, but they exist in reality and they appear in different forms as we play the Holes of Our Life. The key is to look at our contingencies emotionally and financially, and if one of these events should happen, we can deal with them with as little stress as possible and a good chance of working our way through the event without it wrecking our total 5-year plan. The contingencies and how we respond largely shape the “S Curve of Our Life”. Compound the contingency planning with your business or employer, your spouse or partner, add a few children, and a couple close relatives who are dependent on you, and you now have a contingency matrix and an “S Curve” with more moving parts and you can almost be sure at any point in time they are not all moving in the same direction.
REPURPOSING is the last point of this discussion. Is that a crazy word? I use it to replace retirement. In 18 Holes of Life what we used to call retirement could start as early as Hole #12—age 56. In fact, in the old days 55 was mandatory retirement in some companies when the old labor model said you worked for the same company or organization for all your working days. Well that idea has certainly been blown to hell! Today no one works for the same company for more than 5 maybe 10 years, retirement plans don’t exist or they don’t have any value (many are being wiped out by Chapter 11 bankruptcy), and at 55 you still have 7 Holes of Life to play—that is almost another half of life to play.
When I start Hole #12, or any hole shortly thereafter, it’s almost like graduation from High School (Hole #4), my whole life is in front of me but now I know a lot more about ME as a person, the world around ME and what are my chances, my financial situation, and how I may fit into opportunities available at this time. Exciting, scary, challenging—opportunities galore—what do I do now and how does it tie into my family plans, my goals, and how I want to be remembered sometime in the future. With so many Holes ahead of me, I can do many different things, all the things on my “wish list”, I can work for a living and I can help others. I have been the aggressor and taken for 55 years, now I can start to think about giving back during these last Holes of Life. WOW, I better put some time into planning to get the best out of the rest of my life. Where is that book 5 AT A TIME? I need to start thinking about planning the rest of the Holes of My Life in 5-year increments.
The Call to Action is simple: Go buy one or more copies of the 5 AT A TIME softback using link www.bradlienhart.com. Put it to work for yourself using a few simple planning tools. If you like the concept and you feel it is helpful, tell your friends and colleagues at work, integrate your 5 AT A TIME planning with the key people around you, see if it might be used as a Training Tool for work or other social networking groups you are participating in, and think about using it as graduation gift or Christmas stocking stuffer, particularly to get younger people around you thinking about their future and how planning life and career 5 AT A TIME can enhance their return on life.
Your author has had a successful corporate life, has been involved in starting over 30 businesses as a C level manager and fundraiser, is an active business and leadership coach, a financial advisor to a number of private clients, and I would be delighted to have the opportunity to provide consulting support on use of 5 AT A TIME as a personal, corporate, or group planning tool. Use the contact form on the website to communicate how I can best help you or email me at lienhartb@yahoo.com.