In this episode, we discuss the concept of perfect economy and how it can benefit your life.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe where I combine financial planning with self-development coaching for Latino professionals.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about perfect economy. In life, you don’t want to spend too much time doing something and at the same time, you don’t want to spend not enough time on something. I got this concept of perfect economy from Robert Greene and his book 33 Strategies of War. In the chapter called, “Perfect Economy” Robert Green discusses stories on the importance of perfect economy.
The first story is of Great Britain during world war one, where they didn’t send enough troops to take over Turkey. If they would of put more time and resources into taking over Turkey, they would have taken it over and probably would have ended the war sooner but they got too cautious. The second story is about Spain wanting to conquer Great Britain. Spain spent too much money and time trying to take over Great Britain and they ended up going bankrupt and never becoming a major power again.
So in life, you have to figure out how much time you should put into something. If you don’t put enough time and energy into something, it won’t grow or get done. If you spend too much time and energy into something, then it can set you back in terms of time or cause you to go bankrupt because the opportunity has passed.
When you’re starting out in life, it’s going to be hard to know what is the right amount but with enough experience, you can figure out what the right balance is. You just have to be coachable, be open to new ideas, and have a clear vision of what you want to have in the future. By knowing what you want for your future, it will give you a good idea about what you should do. If you want to become a doctor, but you don’t spend any time studying, and you spend all your time watching Netflix, then you’re not spending enough time on the right things or you have to say you don’t want to become a doctor and should find another career path to take.
If you don’t put any energy into something, it won’t grow. If I want to stay in business, then I have to do activities that will help me stay in business. If I don’t do this then it will fail. I also know that I can spend too much time doing something. In economics, there is a term called, diminishing returns.
The longer you stick with something, the less it will become effective. If I’m trying to spend all my time researching a topic like digital marketing and spend no time implementing it, then that research will become less and less effective. Think about studying for an exam. You could have spent 30 hours studying for an exam, but if you could have gotten an A with 8 hours of studying, then you really wasted 22 hours that could have been spent on something more valuable like sleeping, going to the gym, or studying something else that will help you with your career.
22 hours is a lot of time to waste so I make sure that I do what I need to do, and do too much after that, so I can focus my time on the things that matter. If I can do that, then I’m going to complete more important stuff, which will then just provide me more opportunities, which will then give more flexibility and control over my life. So far there, I can choose what I want to do and what I don’t want to do. This is what I’m going after in my life, to spend the majority of my time in things that I want to do and minimize my time in things that I don’t want to do.
To reach this goal, I have to use perfect economy to get this life. If I spend enough time on the important things, then things will fall in place but you have to realize that you can spend too much time on something. If you spend 8 hours in the gym, that will leave you will less time with other things. This could be fine if you’re in the fitness industry and you’re testing things out to help you get better at your job, but if it is not, then you can probably use your time better on other things. It is your choice of how you spend your time but you just have to know the deal before you accept the deal.
I want to have a dog, but I know I don’t have time now to get one. They take a lot of time, and if I’m about to start an Online MBA and grow this business at the same time, then I can’t add another thing to my plate and still be successful. That would be spending too little time and I know that in a couple of years I will have more time. Life is going to be great with a dog but I just have to wait. I don’t want to feel like having a dog is a burden so I’m just going to wait. That doesn’t stop me from visiting the local animal shelter to look at dogs though.
If you spend too little time on something, that means you need to remove somethings on your plate so you can focus more things that are important. It might not be possible right now, but if you just focus on getting one percent better every day, then it is something that can be achieved. For me, right now I pretty much gave up television and movies to focus more on learning and hanging out with friends and family. I used to watch a lot of sports, but now I only watch basketball as my go-to and pretty ignore everything else. This is what is required for me to reach my goals and I find with my choices.
Remember, how you spend your time is a choice, and you’re the sum of your choices. So make sure you’re implementing perfect economy into your life so you can spend more of your time on the things that will make you happy as a person. Life is too short to be unhappy or miserable and we just need to work on living our lives. That’s all we can do in this world.
Thanks for listening today’s episode, to summarize it, in life strive for perfect economy, where you’re not doing too much but you’re not doing too little. This will require experience on your part and you will waste time, and we all waste time but the goal is to minimize it as much as possible. If you do this, then you’ll live the life you want to live and be satisfied with life. I know right now that life is good for me and it’s because I’m implementing perfect economy in my life.
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