INDUSTRY WEEK
GROWING COMPANIES EDITION

Key To Success: Good Health
Edited by Traci Purdum

Learning how to maintain a healthy lifestyle not only will add years to your life, it also will benefit your company's bottom line, says KRS Edstrom, a lecturer, advice columnist, and author of Healthy, Wealthy & Wise (1999, Stone Soft Publishing). The book is based on a study Edstrom conducted on the health habits of high-ranking U.S. executives. Her clients include Malcolm Stamper, former president of Boeing Co., and Debbi Fields, CEO and president of Mrs. Fields Cookies.

According to Edstrom, many of the executives she's worked with had a healthy lifestyle before they made it to the top. Their secrets? Aside from learning how to eat right and exercise, they have learned to prioritize and balance their work and personal lives.

For most executives, especially women, there aren't enough hours in the day to conduct business and take care of necessary household responsibilities. Edstrom suggests that you treat your private time as you do your business time. For starters, why not outsource some of the chores at home? If your plant is having trouble making a deadline, you automatically call in reinforcements -- why should it be any different at home?

"Invest in a cleaning service," says Edstrom. "You can't afford not to." This frees up time to spend with your family, and gives you much-needed personal time for exercise or stress relief.

"Interview potential assistants like you would an employee for your company," adds Edstrom. She also suggests that hired help should be able to perform multiple tasks. "Ask them if they will cook and do laundry and light ironing. Once you have trained them properly, use the time they are there for 'personal me days.' "

Where work is concerned, know when to go home. "Life can't be one constant emergency. Staying late at the office every night is not going to solve all your problems," Edstrom observes, "and very few things get done after hours anyhow."

Edstrom's book also outlines four time-management rules to help executives stay on track:

Be honest with yourself. "We need to respect our contracts with ourselves, and when we feel ourselves slipping and sliding we need to admit it."

Prioritize. Schedule a workout or personal activity on your calendar as you would a business appointment.

Stop procrastinating. "Putting things off is often more painful than the task itself," notes Edstrom. Also, be aware of when, how, and why you are putting things off. Once you realize the patterns, you can start to correct them.

Enjoy the process. "This not only means enjoying a healthy lifestyle, but also enjoying your work. "Ask yourself, 'Do I enjoy what I am doing?' Don't answer logically or financially." The key is to determine if you would do what you are doing without being paid. "In the study I asked this question and [many executives] said that they would work at what they are doing for nothing," says Edstrom.

Before you use this site please read the disclaimer and copyright information.  
Your use of this site means you have read and accept these terms.  Thanks.
© 1999-2016 All rights reserved. Los Angeles, California