Build Your Own Ecosystem
In the world we’re living today, you cannot achieve everything you want to achieve. Not in one lifetime. Because it’s too much. Too much work and too much information to process.
That’s why it’s crucial to define the ecosystem in which you want to evolve. That is, what do you want to do in your life ? Or in other words, who you want to be ?
And don’t tell me “it’s too late for me, I’m in my 30s/40s/50s”. As the saying goes “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now”.
To determine who you want to be, you have to find/choose the cornerstones of your life. To illustrate this, let’s take an example. I have chosen 3 cornerstones which are :
- I want to be fit and healthy
- I want to be financially comfortable
- I want to be knowledgeable about history
Now that you defined your objectives/cornerstones, how can you keep up with them ? Many of us don’t have that much time and it can seem overwhelming at first. As I have been told quite often “We only have 24 hours a day”. Yes, that’s true, but you also have 365 days in a year 😃 It means that being consistent and patient is key.
I will give you some of the methods/guidelines that I use :
- Make a To Do list every day
- Mix entertainment and learning (Watching a movie in a foreign language for instance)
- Break up your long term objectives into daily/weekly habits
- Be patient and consistent, you don’t have to go all in every day, keeping a daily routine is enough. “Rome wasn’t build in a day”
- Entertainment is natural and needed but should not be the the main component of your life
Let’s take an example in practice of how I would do to get better at the 3 cornerstones that I defined before :
- Being fit means (in part) knowing how to eat healthy and how to do sport. This is no magic and you won’t be fit by just putting up your shoes and going for a run one time a month. You have to know which food is good for you, what daily intakes you need (omega 3, vitamins, minerals, …), why do you need them, and so on. Now, you can start preparing a list of meals to cook. Afterwards, you must learn how to do sport, you have some great Youtube channels to do so depending on what sport you want to do.
- If you want to stop worrying about money, start to get some knowledge about it. Learn about how you could invest your money, how the stock market works, starts budgeting your month to see where you can cut expenses.
- If you want to become good at history, start reading books about it. I would make a list of some books I want to read and I’d read before going to bed. And if I’m fed up from my day and I cannot work anymore, I can play a historical video games (like Age of Empires for instance)
Now, I would try to find some spare time where I can do what I listed before. Let’s say I have 1 hour of lunch break at midday, then 1 hour in the evening and 30 minutes before going to sleep. It’s 2h30 of spare time in which you can work on your craft. It doesn’t sound that much in one day but starts adding it up over a year and see how much you have improved !
What I want you to remember is the significance of fixing clear boundaries around the perimeter in which you want to excel. In a world surrounded by entertainment, social media’s notification, advertising, … I firmly believe it is useful to define your own ecosystem.
Of course your ecosystem can (and will) change overtime, you will get interested into things you were not before, it’s completely normal and you should not refrain yourself from being curious and explore new things. On the other hand, you should not being controlled by the changes. It’s about finding a balance between the consistency of your perimeter and the novelty of your environment
I hope this will be useful and that you will try to define your own ecosystem !
Here is my LinkedIn if you want to ask me something : https://www.linkedin.com/in/malo-le-goff-480452170/
