Instructions
A life portfolio is a perceptible depiction of our today’s activities and prime concerns that, in turn, enables us to comprehend the areas where we spend a more significant chunk of resources, mostly time and how this reflection aligns with what we hope for in life. Life portfolio is primarily or majorly concerned about depicting your present life rather than the future.
A life portfolio majorly entails two parts namely: The pillars and the foundation
The pillars are the first segments and the most critical components of our life (Duca & Duque, 2016). Usually, when we talk about them, we accompany them with a suffix “life’’. An example is ‘work life, social life, personal life.’
Foundation encompasses the day to day activities that act as the building blocks to the pillars, as mentioned above of your life. These include the necessary actions, for instance, eating, jogging, or just exercising to sum it up, taking a nap, to mention a few.
The life portfolio explores some values which are in triplicate: Critical, Important and Not Important
The critical facets are the one that gives us immense satisfaction, and we most often want to get indulged in them. They add a lot of values to our existence, and most of the time, we find ourselves spending a more significant portion of our time here.
The essential facets also provide excellent value to our existence; a significant difference from the critical ones is that they do not have to make us happy. Most of the time, we find ourselves delegating them to others where possible (Milligan, 2015).
The not important ones provide minimal, if any, values to our lives. These can be done without most of the time we do away with them to pave the way for more demanding ones.
An in-depth discussion of some of the portfolio aspects are as per the below:
Family Commitments
Family commitment is a core aspect of life portfolio since everybody needs somebody. Family is the basic unit of any society. It is the most challenging and core aspect of life portfolio. It is every person’s wish to have a family of their own, raise a happy family, and get the necessary yet important support from their family members. Most people find it so demanding to balance this aspect and work. Most marriages have halted because of a lack of family commitment from either of the partners (Kemp & Denton, 2016).
Work
We all need to provide for our families. To be able to do this comfortably, we must get indulged in some income-generating activities. This is the only life’s portfolio aspect that we do involuntarily. We do t chose to work; we have to. It is not the core portfolio, but we find ourselves allocating most time to it. Overindulgence in this life’s portfolio aspect could be harmful if not checked well (Gagné & Thomas, 2017).
Work is important because survival is very expensive. To take care of our unlimited needs, we require resources, and these can only be achieved through participating in some activities that would yield income. It has been established that human beings work for almost three-quarters of their lives (Conrad, 2018).
Leisure
Leisure is a life portfolio aspect that can never be overlooked. It is essential for a healthy living. Our brains need to rest and relax. This can only be achieved by having some time off work. Leisure improves creativity, and it heals the mind. Engaging in leisure helps one to rediscover themselves and unearth some potentials that we didn’t know existed in us. It is a time for reflection and self-focuses. In the economics of labor, we discover that leisure is very expensive (Harris, 2015). By it being expensive makes it a core life portfolio aspect. Most studies on the importance of recreation show that those who don’t create time for leisure lead a very pathetic life and are vulnerable to mental ill-health.
The three life portfolio aspects discussed above are core. A balance needs to be struck to ensure all the three are given due attention. Work-life balance, which is the non-opposition between work and other life’s portfolio, is essential. Those who manage to find this balance tend to lead a better life than those who overlook it. It calls for equilibrium between personal life, family commitment, and work (Denton, Kemp, & French, 2018).
One is life’s therapy, the other being resource generating, and the final one helps us achieve a sense of well-being. I would choose the three as the core.
Factors That Influence Personal Goals for My Life Portfolio
Several factors come up as we strive to achieve the balance or purposes that we have set for ourselves for a desirable life portfolio.
I have discussed few of them as per the below:
Gender
I will start by discussing gender and the economy. Most studies have revealed that women do a lot of unpaid work. It amounts to 50%. This is very challenging in trying to strike a balance between work and life.
Men are not that affected are not adversely affected unless in situations where we have single fathers.
Being a woman is too demanding and most women tend to struggle in trying to allocate time as a critical resource to their other life portfolio aspects (Kobb‐Clark & Hildebrand, 2017).
Gender norms have also been confirmed to affect women’s abilities to utilize the family-friendly policies that exist at work.
Health
This is very critical in defining personal goals for the desired life portfolio.it is a factor that needs to be closely monitored. All the subsequent decisions in life depend on health. Work, family commitment, leisure, and all have you, and all revolve around good health. When we talk about health, we factor in mental, physical, and psychological aspects (Duca & Duque, A reflection on aging: A portfolio of change in attitudes toward geriatric patients during a clerkship rotation, 2017).
Economics /Finances
This has always been viewed as the most important factor, and most individuals tend to put a lot of effort into trying to achieve financial stability at the expense of health and family commitment.
Its importance can never be overemphasized, though. Good health and a happy family revolve around here. Having enough money means you can get time off to spend with family and enjoy leisure (Denton, French, Gafni, & Joshi, 2016).
To support the success of my future life portfolio, I will enlist the following three strategies:
Tracking my time to know how much time I spend in every activity I participate in. Doing this will enable me to plan and keep tabs on how I utilize my time.
Noting down my priorities– I shall list my priorities down, starting with the most important ones to the least. In this way, I will be able to tell which ones to drop, the ones I need to start doing more seriously, and also the ones that I should change the approach to how I tackle them.
Setting specific goals-from my priorities, I would decide which ones to turn into concrete goals (Denton, Kemp, & French, Reflexive planning for later life, 2018).
Conclusion
From all the above discussion, a life portfolio calls for diversification of one’s identity and all the things you get indulged in. doing this can can really be uplifting in life even in situations where some segments of your life are not working as per the plan.
Having a well thought of life portfolio actually has been proven to boost ones’ productivity and enhance their reasoning,creativity and innovation (Denton, Kemp, & French, Reflexive planning for later life, 2018). Some people may urgue that starting an investment venture and commiting all efforts on it is all that matters,but don’t we start such ventures to have some freedom in life? By diversifying your life by having this well thought of life portfolio helps you to reclaim that freedom.
References
Conrad, D. (2018). Building knowledge through portfolio learning in prior learning assessment and recognition. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 9(2), 139.
Denton, M. A., French, S., Gafni, A., & Joshi, A. R. (2016). Preparations for Independence and Financial Security in Later Life: A Conceptual Framework and Application to Canada. Gerontology, 229(23), 600.
Denton, M. A., Kemp, C. L., & French, S. (2018). Reflexive planning for later life. Canadian Journal on Aging/La Revue Canadienne Du Vieillissement, 23(5), S71-S82.
Duca, D. D., & Duque, G. (2016). A reflection on aging: A portfolio of change in attitudes toward geriatric patients during a clerkship rotation. Educational Gerontology, 32(8), 605-610.
Duca, D. D., & Duque, G. (2017). A reflection on aging: A portfolio of change in attitudes toward geriatric patients during a clerkship rotation. Educational Gerontology, 32(8), 605-610.
Gagné, A., & Thomas, R. (2017). Language portfolio design for a concurrent teacher education program in Ontario, Canada. Synergies Europe, 6(33), 219-228.
Harris, C. (2015). Postmodern patriotism: Canadian reflections. Canadian. Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien, 45(1), 193-207.
Kemp, C. L., Rosenthal, C. J., & Denton, M. (2015). Financial planning for later life: Subjective understandings of catalysts and constraints. Journal of Aging studies, 19(3), 273-290.
Kemp, C. L., & Denton, M. (2016). The allocation of responsibility for later life: Canadian reflections on the roles of individuals, government, employers and families. Ageing & Society, 23(6), 737-760.
Kobb‐Clark, D. A., & Hildebrand, V. A. (2017). Portfolio Allocation in the Face of a Means‐Tested Public Pension. Review of Income and Wealth, 57(3), 536-560.
Milligan, K. (2015). Life‐cycle asset accumulation and allocation in Canada. Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d’économique, 38(3), 1057-1106.