Personal Constitution as a Guide

Although I procrastinated this week for my Entrepreneurship class, because I had quite the science group project to do, I am so glad that I did because it helped end this week and start off the next one on the right foot.

I finished up reading The Ministry of Business by Steven A Hitz and James W. Ritchie, linked here if you’re interested (http://amzn.com/147503802X).  It was an amazing read with so many things to work on.  I found it was more of a workbook than just a page turner.  I plan to go back through it with my wife during the upcoming summer break so that we can be on the same page with our goals as a couple and family.

One thing that I did this week was my personal constitution.  I’d highly recommend it for anyone.  It’s in chapter 7 of the above referenced book.  The steps are as follows; first you start out by figuring out your Governing Values.  You do this by writing short phrases that you want to describe yourself.  They don’t have to be what you are now, but how you want to become.  Once you have a few (I have seven currently) you then take time to rank them.  This is an important step because as is explained in the book, if you have Integrity and Financial Independent listed you have to know which one comes first.  What if you’re put in a position where if you just fudged a number a little you’d be more financially independent?  If you had Financial Independence ahead of Integrity you might do that, but if you had Integrity ahead, you wouldn’t.  After getting them in order you go through and write out what you mean about these statements and why they are important to you.

Once the personal constitution is done you then go through and make long term goals, short term goals and finally Daily task ideas for each one.  This will help you as you go throughout your life to stay focused on what you’ve said is personally important in your life.

I found so much joy out of this activity.  I think it will really help me to stay focused.  As is mentioned in the book, after sleeping for 7 hours each day, we all get 1020 productivity points (or minutes) each day and it’s up to us how we spend them, so spend them wisely.