TEDx speaker shares how anyone can put happiness first over anything else in life

There are many life lessons to learn from business and corporate experiences. Often, these practical topics leave people with concrete advice for various life circumstances. Rainer Strack, senior partner at Boston Consulting Group, shared noteworthy advice on how to prioritize happiness with CNBC Make It. The man spoke about the no. 1 thing people can effectively do to get happiness and contentment back on track. Strack explained that prioritizing time is closely aligned with happiness and personal goals. He added, “Time is the only asset that we can’t multiply,” he said. “Time is limited here on Earth. It’s a scarce resource, you have to understand what you want to do with this resource concretely."

The team shared a simple exercise one can do to prioritize time. The Strategic Time chart has been shared by Harvard Business Review as well, marking its potential to make a difference in an individual’s life. The chart suggests that one divides their time into 6 major categories that further divide into 16 sub-units. The six categories are Body and spiritual needs, personal care, interests, relationships, job and finance and community or society. The subunits may differ, but the idea is to balance time for each category. Strack and his team suggest making bubble charts to understand the time distribution. Sharing an example, they suggested that if work consumes 10 hours of one’s day and catching up with friends consumes 2 hours, then the job bubble would be significantly bigger than the community or relationships bubble.

“Let’s say your activities of daily living are taking up too much time,” Strack says. “Housework, commuting, other stuff like that. Then you have to think about where you could do things more efficiently. Where could you outsource? And can you use the money to get some time back?" Another example to support Strack’s words was hiring staff or personnel for housework instead of spending added hours on the chores and missing out on time with people or elements that matter more. He added, “You have to think about time more strategically. Usually, we live from week to week and nothing changes. We have to be very concrete about what we do. This analysis helps a lot."

Though the entire concept seems blurry and chaotic, once it is put down in the bubble format, it is sure to help with time management, which contributes to happiness. Adding more, the HBR shares an analysis of 7 questions to help figure out how to build this portfolio and where to allot how much time. The 7 questions are: How do I define a great life? What is my life purpose? What is my life vision? How do I assess my life portfolio? What can I learn from benchmarks? What portfolio choices can I make? How can I ensure a successful, sustained life change? Happiness lies within the power of an individual, all one has to do is chase the right elements. Strack’s chart helps understand and points out which elements are responsible for one’s happiness and how to ensure that the same receives the right amount of time and attention.