Everyone possesses a set of core resources, and how well we invest those resources based on ROI determines our results. Peter Drucker is right that you can’t manage what you don’t measure. But you can’t measure what you don’t know you have. So starting to understand and realize your full inventory of resources is the first step to managing and investing them.
As you progress farther down the list, these things are more and more “fixable”. For example if I don’t know something or have forgotten something, reading a book or calling an expert fixes that. Knowledge or forgetting something is very fixable, my time is not.
What you’ll find about money and stuff, is that if you lose it or abuse it, you can always get more of it, and “fix it”. Your time however, you’ll never have back. Here are all your resources in order:
1. Resource: Time
The reason this resource is first is relatively obvious. We only have a limited amount of it, it’s extremely fixed. So how we spend it is vital to our best results.
2. Resource: Health
This includes your energy, your well-being, your knees, back, etc. How you maintain and care for your health determines a lot of your ability to be productive.
3. Resource: Relationships
Your relationships are some of the highest value resources you have under your time and health! Invest in them or lose them.
4. Resource: Strengths
These are your natural aptitudes. The things you have an advantage at.
5. Resource: Skills
Things you’ve invested in and trained for with practice.
6. Resource: Knowledge
Your expanded consciousness (what you know), crystallized intelligence (stored memories), and fluid intelligence (logic and thinking).
Now that you’re familiar with all the resources in order of value based on scarcity, you can build a “resource inventory” which will help you measure your resources most accurately. I explain this process in detail here, as well as some tools and techniques to leverage them well.