Life Strategy Benchmarking?
Art credit: Vanessa Branchi

Life Strategy Benchmarking?

To plan and execute corporate strategy, executives work through a series of questions to determine how their businesses can succeed. You can use a similar process to figure out how to live a meaningful life. We've created this seven-week series to show you how. You can start here.


Congratulations! You’re more than halfway through your Strategize Your Life project . This week allows you to take a break from introspection, because we’re going to consider: What can you learn from best practices and benchmarks? ?

Corporate strategy-makers conduct benchmark analysis to better understand how leading companies do business and to consider ways to emulate those approaches. Individuals can do the same by looking at role models and then, more important, at the research on life satisfaction.?

Ask yourself: Who conducts their personal and professional life in a way I admire? What makes them worthy and successful, and what choices would they make if they were in my shoes? Now consider what scientific studies across large populations tell us. For example, the German Socio-Economic Panel?survey — which covered almost 100,000 people from 1984 to 2019, gathering more than 700,000 completed responses — found that significant others, children, friends, sports, spirituality, community involvement, salaries, savings, and nutrition all contribute to life satisfaction. Other research points to different life-enhancers: practicing?kindness , mindfulness,?meditation , and?gratefulness ; cultivating more?humor ?and laughter; dedicating time to?learning ; and developing a?growth mindset .??

Benchmarking Life Satisfaction. The exhibit shows different activities that people spend their time doing, and how they relate to overall life satisfaction. The charts are based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, which surveyed almost 100,000 people from 1984 to 20 19. The findings show that people report feeling greater life satisfaction, for example, when they are married, when they’re physically active more often, when they’re more socially engaged, and when they get seven to ten hours of sleep per night. Source: Wann sind wir wirklich zufrieden? (When are we really satisfied?), by Martin Schr?der.

This information gathering will help you in the next step of this process to make decisions about how to shift your life portfolio for the better. But remember that what works for others — or for people on average — won’t necessarily be right for you. Your life strategy should be unique.?

Learn more

Our Favorite Advice on Work, Change, and Life ?

Why Success Doesn’t Lead to Satisfaction ?


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Elene Modebadze

F&B Supervisor at Dormitory Hualing Tbilisi

9 个月

Love this

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MICHAEL DUEH DAVIES

Senior Assistant Registrar I at West African Examinations Council Liberia National Office

9 个月

Useful insights into the Life Cycle Hypothesis?

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Edrise Marisa Turner

Chief Operating Officer

9 个月

Thanks for taking me all the way through Business School at Florida Atlantic University. That Life Strategy Chart is perfect. I just left a Charity which Changes the Lives of People who flounder. I will share the CHART with them.....we need to think....thanks.....

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Philippe ROCCI

Key Account_Manager LPSB_Ingénieur commercial Marketing/développement durable/Logistique/Gestion documentaire.

9 个月

Comapraison is not reason. The behavior models are different but are influenced and oriented. The real surprise would be to leave room for intuition and singularity to create a new model in line with oneself or the surrounding world, right? It is a way to develop a growth mindset in a state of consciousness. ??

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