The Maximum Balance Framework

The Maximum Balance Framework is a program that assists men and women, young and old, to achieve superior but balanced success in five critical Cornerstones of life — personal, relationships, career, finance and giving. As with any framework, you will need to adapt this approach to your own personality to achieve the results you are individually seeking. Further, use the Maximum Balance Community to adapt ideas and insights from your peers and professionals to create a framework for living a balance life that is unique to your needs.

We recommend that everyone start by learning the 3-step Maximum Balance Framework of Assess, Plan, Act! that is outlined below and reinforced across most Maximum Balance products and concepts.

Assess
Before you can tackle the tough challenge of achieving balanced success across your goals and objectives, it is important to step back and evaluate where you currently stand across the five Cornerstones of life — personal, relationships, career, finance and giving.

To get you thinking, we have put together samples of qualitative and quantitative questions designed to promote introspection. These questions appear in the free worksheets available in the Maximum Balance Toolkit, as well as in a number of Maximum Balance products. Working through these and similar questions that you define will provide you with a firm understanding and grounding of your balance, focus, priorities and achievement at any given time. We have organized these questions (and worksheets) across the five Cornerstones of life so that you can begin to formulate where you are being successful today, and where focused effort will drive more balance.

It is important to realize that the Assess stage is an on-going and iterative part of achieving Maximum Balance, as every day brings new challenges, tasks, and decisions that can change your state. Assess yourself frequently using your personal Journal.

Plan
Once you've established a baseline for your current success and balance across the five Cornerstones of life, it is time to put together a plan for action. Within Maximum Balance, planning isn't about arbitrarily coming up with a bunch of tasks or commitments you may or may not keep. Rather, the Maximum Balance plan involves understanding the underlying factors or 'Balancing Points' that govern your individual success, satisfaction and balance across your activities. You can search on 'Balancing Points' within the Maximum Balance Get Balanced articles to read more.

During the planning stage, you begin to define the goals and objectives you want to achieve in each Cornerstone. You also identify the resources - people, places and tools - that will assist you in achieving your goals. And most importantly, you begin to put together a timeline for executing on your plan.

Act!
Now that you've established a baseline for current success and balance across all of the critical Cornerstones of life, and you've begun to develop a plan for improvement across those Cornerstones, it is time to act. To achieve Maximum Balance, you must recognize and build upon the tasks and activities you're already doing, or could easily implement, to further your achievement and your balance within multiple Cornerstones simultaneously.

This means recognizing that you're not broken. Much of what you already do every day is ideal for building balance.

ACT! isn't about doing more, it's about more balance. You maximize the return on your time and energies by identifying tasks and activities that you enjoy, but that also can provide 'balance' for multiple focus areas of your life.

Continue to read through the articles in the Get Balanced section of this site, and spend time in the Community to learn about how others are achieving balance in their lives. Spend some time in the Maximum Balance Store to find specific tools, guides and worksheets for implementing an Assess, Plan and Act! framework in your life.