The following is adapted from ENRICH.
There’s a misery epidemic among workers. “It’s official,” read a headline in the U.K. newspaper The Telegraph. “Most people are miserable at work.” Why is there so much misery? Why does work feel so much like, well, work for some people? This problem has three main causes. We’ll dig deeper into each of them and then discuss a solution to this Monday Morning Malaise.
#1: Financial Insecurity
In November 2019, U.S. unemployment was at a record low and the stock markets were at record highs. Yet, according to the U.S. Financial Health Pulse 2019 Trends Report, seven out of ten Americans were either just “financially coping” or “financially vulnerable.” Keep in mind that these findings were released before COVID-19 hit. Now one out of every three Americans is earning less than they were before the pandemic.
Most people equate financial security with job security. That’s dangerous, especially in times like these. COVID-19 caused the fastest surge in unemployment in history. In April 2020, just 51 percent of adult Americans had full-time jobs.
Dependence upon a risky paycheck is not a happy place to be. If you worry about income or debt, you feel you have few or no options, regardless of how well the other aspects of your life are going. Financial insecurity produces stress and worry, messes with your mind, and can lead to all kinds of suboptimal behaviors and outcomes.
#2: Time Poverty
Most of us manage our personal time like we manage our money—not very well. According to a global study conducted by Ernst & Young, not having enough time accounts for four of the five biggest hurdles professionals face. Those four hurdles were:
- Getting enough sleep
- “Finding time for me”
- “Finding time for family and friends”
- Additional hours worked
Sound familiar? Many workers feel overscheduled, overextended, overloaded, and overwhelmed. Somehow, because of multitasking, we squeeze thirty-one hours of activity into a twenty-four-hour day. No wonder we feel life is out of control.
There’s a huge disconnect in how we spend our days and how we’d like to spend our days. We spend so much time making a living that we fail (or forget) to make a life.
#3: No Progress Toward Personal Priorities
Each January 1, we We vow to improve our lives. We vow to exercise more, lose weight, make more time for friends and family, and be happier.
Yet according to a U.S News & World Report, 80 percent of us fail to achieve our New Year’s resolutions. Most people quit within six weeks of starting.
This lack of advancement toward important personal goals also creates unhappiness, stress, frustration, fear, anger, loneliness, apathy, or even helplessness. These dispiriting emotions drain energy and suck the life out of life.
The Solution is to ENRICH
There is a way out of this malaise. I’ve developed a six-step process called ENRICH, which teaches you how to create financial security and time wealth, and ignite what’s most important.
- Essentialize: Inject the essential ingredients that make life delicious.
- Narrow: Prioritize your priorities. If you don’t set your priorities, someone else will.
- Reach: Set compelling goals to get where you want to go.
- Ignite: Get into action. Turn your goals into reality.
- Calibrate: Enhance joy and fulfillment at work and at home.
- Harness time: When you control your time, you control your life.
ENRICH empowers you to create the life you want, and uses a number of proprietary tools to help you get there. The heart of this method involves creating a Life Plan, which charts your most important personal, financial, career goals, and Annual Financial Plans to help you achieve long term financial targets.
Enriching life is a complex process. There are many interconnected moving parts—personal, financial, and professional. The ENRICH method unifies all these moving parts into a complete solution to the Monday Morning Malaise. This process works because it integrates and addresses all the aspects of modern professional life, including accelerating financial security–which gives you optionality at work and in life.
Beating the Monday Morning Malaise
Your mindset on Monday mornings and the overall quality of your life reflect your choices. While financial insecurity, time poverty, and a disconnect with personal goals are widespread issues, there’s a viable solution to enrich your life.
The goal is to not to try to have it all, but to Ignite all that matters.
For more advice on creating happiness, you can find ENRICH on Amazon or visit Enrich101.com.
Todd Miller is an American-born entertainment executive who has extensively researched and aggressively experimented with the work-life equation for over a quarter century. While scaling the corporate ladder, Miller skillfully structured two sabbaticals, intentionally created a family through adoption, cycled coast to coast across two continents in support of children’s charities, and explored more than 100 countries on all seven continents. Drawing on ENRICH principles, Miller built time wealth and passive income while working full time. At age 53, the American-born author has retired on the Andaman Sea in Thailand, where he devotes his time to enriching connections with people and projects.