Corporation You: Changing the Way You Organize Your Life

As someone just starting out, you're still learning how to work and hopefully you are looking for ways to get the most from yourself. By this point you realize that a lot about life is competitive and the way you structure your work process and your life can have huge implications when it comes to being successful.

Businesses epitomize the competitive atmosphere of today's working world and businesses are constantly looking to find a competitive advantage that sets them apart from others in their market. If you acknowledge that the workplace is a competitive market, why shouldn't you be looking for ways to set yourself apart as well? Now I realize you are not a business, but that's not to say it wouldn't hurt to think of yourself as one. I think it is very important to realize how competitive advantage can be scaled to the personal level.

When it comes to your career, each person is their own business. Your work is your product. Your competition is anyone who does the same type of job or work that you do. You must examine yourself and know your strengths and weaknesses, just like a business would. You may not be able to sell as well as someone else or you may not have as many connections as another person but if you're a better researcher than both of them then you tailor your approach from that angle. You would succeed by doing better targeted research to find the clients who are most compatible and then you don't need to talk to as many people or cast as wide a net as the others.

Individuals in the same line of work still possess many different strengths and weaknesses. Those that succeed are the ones who take better advantage of their strengths and do a better job adapting their "competitive advantages" to the job at hand.

Hopefully you can see why it makes sense to think about yourself in this way. Treat yourself as business and get the most from yourself. I don't mean this in a harsh or cold way but in a personal improvement way.

When it comes to organizing your life, you might also take a different approach if you continue to look at yourself as a business. Thinking of your accomplishments as profits, your goals as earnings targets, and yourself as the product, what would you change or do differently in your life if you were running it as a business? From deciding whether you can reduce costs by living in a different place or apartment or changing your diet to reevaluating how effective your current technology use is, there are many ways to examine your life from an entrepreneurial perspective.

Put the same effort into your everyday life that you would put into a new venture and the change in "revenue" may surprise you.