Georg Harenberg: A Strategy for your life
My mission
I am a honest and upright person with high moral standards
My family and my close friends are the centre of my life
My life and my work create high-quality, creative and socially just services, in which everyone involved
makes and receives a fair share
I want to live up to the year 2065 as a healthy and active human
Let me tell you what helped me to get there
Understand why a strategy / targets for your life are so important
Help you define this strategy and adequate targets
Implement these targets against an opposing external world
Give you some guidance to celebrate the fulfillment of these targets while being happy and healthy
Give you some insight on how I manage my daily life and what I enjoy
2 prerequisites for your 3 goals
1. Have a Strategy for your life
Harvard Psy1504 (Dr. Ben-Shahar)
Some of Dr. Ben-Shahar‘s advice:
o Hamburger Analogy
o Complete the sentence: „To bring me 5% more happiness …“
o Happiness Boosters
o Simplify
o Mind-Body Connection
o Happiness as the ultimate currency
F. Herzberg: Biggest motivator is not money
Self Determination Theory (SDT):
Clayton Christensen: How will you measure your life?
o How can I be happy in my career?
• Management if practiced well is the noblest of all occupations
• It is not about buying, selling and making deals but building up other people
It is not important to be the best.
It is important to be a better person than yesterday.
• One hour a day on thinking about your career rather than studying content
• Clarity about the purpose of your life will trump knowledge of activity based costing
Think long and hard about what you really want
o How can I be sure that my relationship with my family is an enduring source of happiness?
• Allocate your resources (like the CEO of a conglomerate)
• Do not overinvest in your career and underinvest in your family
You have to pay in to get the kind of children that you want
o How can I live my life with integrity?
• Avoid the „Marginal Cost“ Mistake (low cost for „just this one time“)
• Staying to your principles 100% is easier than 98%
Staying to your principles is a 100% game
Target setting - KEY LEARNINGS
o Balance future and present
o It‘s not money that will make you happy
o It takes time and effort to define clear targets
o Nothing comes for free – not even a happy family
o You can only be the „true yourself“ if you stay to your principles
Biases, a proven way to cheat yourself
How to cope with Biases
It is not important to be the best.
It is important to be a better person than yesterday.
Strategy – habits
Biases and Decisions – KEY LEARNINGS
o Spend time and effort to understand biases
(i.e. cheating yourself)
o Take 20 minutes by yourself - Think Exercise
o Write the pros and cons on a piece of paper
o Be honest, at least to yourself
o Learn how to break bad habits and establish
good ones
o Unfortunately only the bad habits come for
free (temporarily)
o You have to work on building good habits
Strategy - Target Implementation
o New Year’s Resolution: More than 60% make a New Year ‘s resolution; 8% implement that resolution.
Nevertheless, almost all restart again on December 31
o Monday Morning Plan – a mind like water
Break your whole week into tasks:
- Evaluate your performance from last week and which tasks you have not achieved
- Identify all issues for the current week (just a simple list)
- Cluster these issues into:
• Projects (timeframe > 1 month)
• Weekly Targets
• Targets for today
- Do not end the day before the „Targets for Today“ are achieved
- Use the calendar of your smartphone for (annual) reminders but keep your ToDo list on paper
- Use „Evernote“ (or something else) to organize your stuff
o Monday Morning Plan – the panic version
Solution I:
o Just work the pile
o Do not prioritize
o Dedicate a timeslot to this task and STOP after the time passed
Solution II
o Start with your today AND weekly list
o Spread all tasks over the week
It is not important to be the best.
It is important to be a better person than yesterday.
o The Force of 10 Minutes a Day
Imagine the one thing you always wanted to be able to do. Now try to estimate how much time you spend
today with… Subtract 10 minutes from that time and evaluate whether it makes a difference. Invest these
ten minutes into … stretching, reading, piano, family, fitness, clean, eating, giving love and appreciation.
Invest these ten minutes into any of these subjects for 1/5/10/25 years on a daily basis and you will become
an expert in that field
2. Turn 100
Food – key Learning
o Eat real food
o EAT PLANTS (vegan is the way to go)
o If you “need” animal protein it should be from fatty fish
o NO SUGAR
o Intermittent Fasting
o Drink enough water
o Eat Lactobacillus Reuteri
o No Supplements
Sleep
Sleeping advice:
o Stick to a sleep schedule
o No alcohol, large meals, nicotine, exercise, blue light before bed
o Dark, cool and gadget free bedroom (one exception is a wakeup light)
o Don’ lie in bed awake (20 minutes rule)
Move
o 10-15 minutes a day on mobility
o Mobility is a 7days a week workout
o Mobilization is the prerequisite for a strength workout
o There is a technique for squats, bench press, push-ups, deadlifts
Mental Happiness
o There is extensive research on happiness in psychology and neuroscience
o There is a strong connection between happiness and success – not success and happiness
o Balance future and present
o Allocate your energy, intensity only where needed
o Take a technology fast
o Get More Done by Doing More of Nothing
Book implementation for inspiration
o Daniel Kahneman (Nobel Laureat 2002): “Thinking fast and slow”
o Richard Thaler (NL 2017): “Nudge! Improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness”
o Hans Rosling, “Factfulness: the stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong
supporting facts”
o Dave Allen: ”Getting Things Done”
o Mark Verstegen: “Core Performance”
o Barbara Minto: “The Pyramid Principle”
o Krogerus / Tschäppeler: “50 Erfolgsmodelle” (german, sorry)
o Timothy Ferris: “Tools of Titans”, “Tribe of Mentors”, 5 Bullet Friday
o Arthur Rubinstein: “My Many Years”
o Always an “old school” inspiration: “Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005”
It is not important to be the best.
It is important to be a better person than yesterday.