The System -Part 1

Living in the Bucket

The System

Before I start into the details of this system, I want to make a disclaimer.  After forty plus years of books, conferences, and classes, I can no longer remember where or when I got the ideas that are contained in the structure.  Let’s just give a giant nod to all of my teachers and mentors as I attempt to combine all these thoughts into a workable program.   Thanks for helping me grow.

Roles, Resources, and Responsibility

Life is difficult to manage!  My experience has taught me to organize and execute.  Living in the Bucket is my attempt to suggest an easy system for you to do the same thing.  After introducing the four major components, I intend to give examples of how to put the concept into practice.  It is my hope to create a community that will exchange and expand the system by suggesting additions to the ideas presented.

Roles

The first part of this system is to identify your Roles.  Think of them as categories of your identity.  In my case I found it to be helpful to group these Roles by what I call Realms (Personal, Private, and Professional).

Under each Realm, there are some specific Roles that can be identified.  Ideally, the resources that you allocate would be equal in each Realm (more on that later).

Try this exercise for yourself and see what you come up with.  Eventually, we will use this chart to set Goals though Activities, but first things first.

Resources

It’s easy to think of your Resources only in one dimension; money.  But what about other ones such as Time, Health, Relationships, or Vigor (more on that later as well).  Effective use of these resources increases the probability that you will have a successful outcome on the pursuit of your Goals.

Responsibility

Steven Covey noted author, refers to Victor Frankel’s concept that true freedom comes from the ability to respond to outside stimuli.   He states that we are responsable, or able to respond to situations as we choose. It is a basic theme of Living in the Bucket, that you choose what activities and resources you will engage in on a conscious level.  In other words, be purposeful about how and what you do.

 

 

 

My Roles

If you think about your life as a movie, you are asked in every scene to play a “role”.  How do you go about this with no script to guide you?  Let’s consider a process that breaks down your roles into Realms.  As I stated my Realms are Private, Professional and Personal.

Look at the chart below, it shows how I have done it for myself.

BOB'S REALMS
 

 

 

An Example

When I sold my planning practice, my Profesional Realm contracted, freeing up resources to expand my Activites  in the other Realms.  One Role that I wanted to expand on was “Father”.  After some thought, I came up with the Actvity of Dad, Daughters, and Dinner.  Once a month, one of my two daughters picks a resturant and we  go (my treat) to have a leisure meal.  The only rule is that we treat each other as equals and try to relate on a individual basis, as friends.  This has produced some suprising insights into our relationships. 



Dad, Daughters, & Dinner - July 2016

 

In my next post, I will discuss how to identify your Goals and link them to your Roles.

Until then, I wish you fulfillment.

Bob