What value can I add?

We have become so focused on immediate gratification of our wants and desires that we develop near sightedness. Perhaps it is time for us to take a step back and look at the whole value picture of an idea rather than just looking at the short term financial return of it.

In his book, The Six Value Medals, Edward de Bono gives us six value angles to use when we are evaluating our values. These are what he terms value 'medals' and they are:

1. Gold = People values,
2. Silver = Organizational values,
3. Steel = Quality values,
4. Glass = Creative-, Innovative- and Simplicity Values,
5. Wood = Environmental values, and
6. Brass = Perceptual Values.

Say you need to make a choice between buying a brand new car or a 10 year old used car for your business, which one would you choose? Most financial pundits will tell you to go for the cheaper option as they only focus on the financial value. But what about the perceptual value? If you are a hedge fund manager and are competing with other successful managers for investors' funds, perceptual value might actually be more important.

Recently I was facing the choice whether or not to invest in a brand overhaul of one of my websites. Now most small business advisers focuses on the bottom line so they value branding work as less important than financial value. Using the above value framework I was able to gain clarity on my decision. Organizationally (Silver values) I was letting go of a small lump sum of money to redesign and re-brand the site – so a negative silver value. Yet, I will also improve the visitor experience (Gold and Steel values) as well as improving the quality perception of the site even though the content stays the same (Brass values). In the end, the decision was an easy one.

You might find yourself in a similar type of situation where you have to evaluate the value of some or other proposition. Some of these type of tough situations or choices might include:

• Whether or not to get a new family pet.
• Choosing to invest in education and learning
• Whether to ask your boss for a raise or not.
• Should the company support this charity initiative?
• Admitting to a mistake, like polluting the environment, and taking action to remedy the situation.
• Taking a break and going away on holiday.

So before you make that choice just based on its monetary values, ask yourself what effect it will have on the people I work with / for (Gold values); what is the organizational impact, i.e. Profit, efficiency, family cohesion, etc. (Silver values); Will the quality of the my offering change (Steel values); Is this an innovative solution (Glass values); What is the environmental or third party impact of this choice (Wood values); and What potential perception change will happen because of it (Brass values).

Whatever decision you are faced with, this value framework provides a very useful way to look at the bigger picture. Get clarity on what value you are adding and proceed to act with confidence!

Wealthy thoughts:
Work for only four hours a week
– inspired by Timothy Ferriss

He explains his process with the acronym D.E.A.L. It stands for:

• Define: What is important to you? What does your dream life look like? What activities are you engaged it? What adventures do you want to have?
• Eliminate: Where are you spending your time at the moment? How much time are you wasting with the unimportant? What activities can you delegate? How can you manage your time better?
• Automate: What are you an expert in (or what can you become an expert in)? How can we monetize your expertize? How do we automate this process and create an income 'muse' for you?
• Liberate: What to do now that you have so much free time. Living the adventures you dreamed of. How to give back to the community.

Define your ideal life

A lot of goal setting and success planning guidance are focused on the very long term and postponing the things we want to do at the present. Timothy actually tells us to focus only on things we want to do in the next 6 months to a year. Two important things about his approach are:

1. Set exciting dreams: Going on a vacation to Oklahoma isn't as much of an incentive as going on vacation to Tahiti. The things you want to get / experience must make you feel alive with excitement and anticipation.
2. Define how much it will cost: Say you want a Ferrari (exciting). Instead of saying $1 million is out of reach, actually look into how much it will cost you per month and set that as a target monthly income goal.

Eliminate

Nice dreams, but who has the time? The section focuses on streamlining your time efficiency. Have you got your email open all day ready to respond to anything? That is not time efficient as you lose focus on what you were doing if you go back and forth from working to email. Calls interrupting your work? Send it to voice mail. Meetings wasting your time? Delegate or ask to be excused.

To create more time for yourself to work on your dreams, you need to be as efficient as possible with the time you have available. Eliminating time wasters are the first step to get more time doing the things you really want.

Automate

Now that you know what you want and you have time, its time to work on creating an automated source of income. Leverage what you already know into an online system that produces income while you sleep. Not an expert in anything? Not to worry – Timothy explains how you can become an expert in almost any area of interest.

Build a system, or 'muse' as he calls it, that will get you the income stream necessary to fund your dreams. Online or business systems that lend itself to such an automated business are things like commissions from promoting others' products; get a license to produce and sell someone else's products; paying others commissions to sell a product you create.

Spending some time and effort upfront to develop an effective system will give you better chances of success and (hopefully) lead to that automated source of income to live the life you want.

Liberate

All of the work up to now have been done with the time you created by being more efficient while still working for someone else (in most cases). Once you have created your own automated income stream, you don't have to work for someone else if you don't want to.

But what to do with all this free time? This is the time to start living and doing the things you set out to do. You might even be surprised to find that you have time to spare. How about traveling the world? Or maybe learning a new language or skill? No more excuses, this is your opportunity to live the life you've always wanted!


Going back to the acronym we started with, we can define the philosophy of getting to a four hour work week as follows: Define what you want. Eliminate time wasters. Automate and develop an income system. Liberate yourself from the normal 9 to 5 and do what you want.

1. Track your income and expenses. On paper or on a computer it doesn't matter as long as you do it.
2. Delay impulsive expenses where possible. Want that big screen TV? Go home and think about it for a day or two and if you still feel the same, then do the 'impulse' buy.
3. Experience is more important than things. We come to regret buying 'stuff' much more easily than buying experiences. Paying $5 for a trip to the zoo is an experience you'll remember whereas that same $5 for a DVD is more easily forgotten.

"Mens sana in corpore sano" (A healthy mind is housed in a healthy body)
- Latin saying