I have been thinking about life management a lot. Management in this context is to take control of every aspect of your life: career, finance, relationship, health, and time. I’ve summarized the top three things that we must know how to control, keep balances and in check all the time to make sure you’re living safely and having a future.
- Health
- Time
- Finance
I believe these are three aspects that you need to focus on to be able to have good control of your life and to be able to prepare for unexpected events.
About health, it’s really about how you feel throughout the day. Do you feel tired or do you feel good? If you are good then I think you’re fine. But if you feel like you are tired and doing something wrong then it’s definitely time for you to review your lifestyle, do you have enough sleep? do you eat well? Do you have to deal with and born diseases? Naturally, if you are able to take control of your diet then you’re 90% healthy. I mean, it’s all about diet to be healthy, it’s the input of your body and if you eat well, the output is your body is healthy. From my experiment and my own research, managing diet is not really only about micronutrition, it’s about keeping your calories in balance. In today’s world, it’s far too easy to supply yourself with huge amounts of calories from food. Food in today’s world is so redundant because of the farmer’s productivity, our economy with the advances in technology has been able to produce food in mass. Therefore the problem is not really about not having enough good, healthy food, it’s about how you can take just enough of it in your body to keep you alive. Just enough food means just enough carbs, protein, and fat. Just enough calories to keep you feeling energetic and sustained and recovering. For me, I only eat two slices of bread, 1 large egg, and a protein shake is already good for me to keep my day going. I can fast for the whole day / 24 hours and still feel energetic. To be honest, your body does not require a lot of food, by a lot I mean more than two slices of bread, 1 large egg, and a protein shake, in order to survive. You still have a lot of energy stored in your belly / or abdominal fat, why don’t you use it? If you are worried about lacking vitamins or minerals, I honestly say it’s not worth thinking about because it’s plentiful in any kind of fruit, vegetable, or meat. If you still feel unsafe and worry about malnutrition, get supplements then you will be just fine. The only thing I worry most about is that we have to eat more than we need and that will keep us sick all the time.
Besides food, it’s the time the need to take control of. We all have 24 hours to spend and half of it I am pretty sure you spend on necessary things for humans to stay alive like eating, hygiene, and sleeping. The rest of the 12 hours you often spend on recreation and productivity. Do anything you need to do and you are the one who decides your own fate or future. Whether you’re becoming wealthier or not it’s really about what you’re doing in the 12 hours time budget that you have. To be honest, I think life today is much more busier than our grandparents, I am saying busier but not happier because today we have information technology. With the computer and the internet, we can make us busy almost all the time. And I feel like the system is forcing us to work harder and be smarter (by learning and knowing more), if we are unable to proceed with whatever the previous generation giving us (like knowledge, wisdom, and technology) then civilization will certainly going backward, we are down-grading ourself. The system is punishing so hard for anyone who is lazy but rewarding so good for anyone who is hard-working at the same time. That’s how the financial system works in the modern world, they are adjusting everything, the housing price, the labor income, and so on, all of them contributing to a fair system that forces everyone to be better and work hard in order to have a good life. In the 12 hours you have, you can make yourself a wiser person, and a more productive member of your organization, or you can waste it on being lazy: like doing nothing. Being alive is already pressure, we are not living in the Garden of Eden, we are living in a world where we must do stuff in order to survive. This world is moving nonstop, the Earth does not stop rotating and you will have to work while your heart is beating. So lying around or not doing stuff means against the universe. Of course, I am not saying that we should only work and study the whole time, we have good stuff then we also have bad stuff, we must spend time replenishing ourselves and our soul, you should go outside, enjoy nature, spend good quality time with family and friends, enjoy a movie or read a book that you like, rewarding yourself for being hard-work is a way to keep yourself in balance. It’s just you do not overdo something and must always focus on productivity – I am pretty sure that whoever does a good job in their work is a happy person.
Finance management, or money management in simpler terms, is the management of income and expense. You must not spend more than you earn. If you live in poor (like having no clothes, house, food, or medicines), then it’s important to seek help from anyone, society still has a place for poor people and always gives them a chance to make a living and get a more comfortable life. But for whoever has 4 limbs, and 5 senses (I mean not disabled), if you’re healthy then you can definitely do work, whatever works is it, you can still be able to get a place to live and some food to eat. It’s just not a life that is redundant, but it’s liveable. To be honest, if I am not a software engineer, I will work in some factory, get underpaid is fine too, as long as I can buy bread, an egg, and possibly a banana, and of course, live in a place that is not under the bridge. My dad always says: if you do not study/ or work hard, then you will go live somewhere under the bridge. It’s all about managing to be able to live under pressure. Only buy what you need, you have to be cautious about whatever you are about to purchase, I mean little things like a coffee or a snake, you have to think about whether you really need it.
Overall, the wisdom word here is: “just enough”. Eat just enough, have just enough fun, buy just enough stuff, maybe barely sufficient to keep you surviving. If you’re a surplus member of society, you’re wealthier than everybody else. Surplus here I mean utilizing just enough and preserving the rest.