WHY YOU NEED LIFE KPI’S & HOW TO DEFINE THEM

LIFE KPI’S & WHY YOU NEED SOME

 I’ve talked about Life KPI’s in a few posts recently, and I thought it’s about time I dedicated a post to the somewhat cryptic phrase that I keep using. Life KPI’s simply refers to what it is you want to get out of life. Your ambitions, your goals, your targets. Often in life we can stumble along, expereince highs, experience lows, and put our energy and effort into a whole host of things, some of which we don’t enjoy and some of which we do. Some things we do help get us to where we want to be and others delay us or take us off course. More often than not I don’t think we even consider (in a longer term way) the actions we take and whether or not they are helping us achieve the things we want to achieve. We might look at certain things in isolation, such as work goals, or family goals. But I feel that it’s not often we think about life goals, how it all fits together, our priorities, our passions, our ambitions. In totality. And that is where life KPI’s come into play.

It’s something I started thinking about this year when I was tasked with making an exceptionally difficult (but very exciting) career decision. Myself and a close friend both received the same advice … think about the long term, not just the short term, work out what your life KPI’s are, and ensure all your actions help you on your way to achieving this.

Whilst it may seem daunting or complicated. It’s actually very simply. What do you want to have in life?

Deep. But well worth thinking about, because the reality is, once you’ve started to think about what it is you want to get out of life … you’ll start to fill your time with all those things that help you achieve it. AND, get rid of the things that counter it.

HOW TO DEFINE YOUR LIFE KPI’S

#1 What makes you happy

First of all, you must think about what makes you happy. After all I’m sure all of us would agree that something we want to have and ahcieve in our lives is happiness, right? But happiness comes from lots of different things, happiness is a feeling, and so when it comes to creating life KPI’s you need to think beyond just the feeling, to what exactly it is that actually makes you happy (and would make you happy in the future).  A home, success in your career, hobbies, a family, health etc. In reality these are still generic, but the point is they should be personal to you. Once you truly know the things that make you happy, bring you contentedness and are the things you want to have more of in your life, you’ll be able to start focusing on filling your life with more of the good stuff.

#2 What doesn’t make you happy

Much like defining what fuels your happiness. Spend some time thinking about the neagtives too, what makes you stressed, sad, disappointed, angry. More importantly what triggers those feelings. When you know what fuels negativity in your life you can start to filter some of the shit out. What’s the point in spending time and energy on things that don’t help deliver against your overall life happiness or life success measures. Your life KPI’s.

In many ways my #NotSorry post was all about this. Well worth a read if your interested in the subject (even if I do say so myself).

#3 Focussing & Prioritising your time

It’s important that once you’ve defined the triggers of your happiness or negativity  that you ensure you focus and prioritise your time, energy and thoughts to those things that help you achieve that overall life happiness (and cut the bits that don’t). Focus your efforts on working towards those things that make you happy, make you successful, make you content & make you feel as though you’re living life the right way, for you. Those are the things that form your life KPI’s.

#4 Perspective

Of course perspective is essential (in my opinion it’s essential in every element of life), but maintaining some perspective, realism and openness is really key. Clearly your life KPI’s aren’t short term goals, they’re life long, and so they’re likely to change, evolve, adapt as you grow, and know more about yourself, what you want to achieve and how you feel. So always maintain open & remember to retain some perspective. Not everything will fall into place in one moment, in reality your life KPI’s are just a set of guiding thoughts to ensure you’re always doing something positive and putting your energy and work into something that you genuinely want to achieve or do. Equally defining your life KPI’s is a great way of aiding decision making, or making positive changes … but it all must be done with a measure of perspective. Because I’m sure we’d all love to be millionaires travelling the world and enjoying lifes luxuries if we could … but that’s not the point.

#5 Time

And so to that point. Things take time. And there will be times quite naturally where you don’t feel happy, or you have to do things that don’t quite get you from a to b as quickly or directly you’d ideally like. And that is fine. There’s no rush or pressure. These life KPI’s are purely guidelines or ideas to sense check yourself against every now and then … are you filling your time with productive actions? Or are you spending time on the things that don’t give you the happiness, notion of success or sense of achievement?

If anything, I think it’s worth spending 5 minutes of your time thinking about.

What do you think about forming some life KPI’s? Do you have some already, do you already know the things you want to achieve, the things you want to spend more time doing & the things you want to cut out? I’d love to hear what you think & what you are striving towards?