The Way to Wealth by Steve Shipside Read Free Book Online Page A

dumpers. Any delegated task must find not only a slot in your to-do list but a grading. If its grading doesn’t put it at the top of the list, point that out to the would-be task dumper and refuse.

21 BE PHYSICALY FIT ENOUGH TO EARN A FORTUNE
    When Franklin tells us that ‘sloth, by bringing on diseases, absolutely shortens life’ he’s not referring to upside-down South American mammals—he means that couch potatoes will vacate their seats on the board earlier than their more active colleagues.
DEFINING IDEA …
    A country can truly call itself sporting when the majority of its people feel a personal need for sport.
    ~ PIERRE DE COUBERTIN, FATHER OF THE MODERN OLYMPIC GAMES
    If physical fitness was the key to wealth then Bill Gates would be taking investment advice from Chuck Norris and FTSE 100 boardrooms would be filled with ripped, lean torsos and buttocks of steel. If you snorted milk out of your nose on reading that then you’ve seen the kind of people who sit in FTSE 100 boardrooms. Clearly physical fitness isn’t a necessity for earning a fortune, and the truly wealthy are more likely to look like The Simpsons’ Montgomery Burns than David Beckham, but that doesn’t mean that fitness is unimportant to success.
    Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade you already know that you should be exercising for half an hour or more at least three times a week. What you might have missed was that this does more than trim your waistline and give grown men an excuse to wear tights in public. In addition to improving lung and heart capacity which, in themselves, may add years to your life and improve your daily lot, exercise has a number of benefits that affect wealth as well as health.
    Physical fitness is proven to help cope with stress. Left untreated, extreme stress can bring on anxiety, tense muscles, high blood pressure and low resistance to illness. Non-competitive sports help counter all of the above as well as boosting your immune system to make you more resilient to illness. By releasing endorphins in the body, exercise also makes you feel good; it’s been shown to help with anxiety and depression. A sensible fitness regime also helps you sleep better, which in turn has a beneficial effect on both productivity and stress levels. Plus there is the psychological effect that because fitness and activity increase self-esteem, they can also build self-confidence.
    Put together, all that means that someone who exercises sensibly on a regular basis is likely to be sharper, better rested, more able to deal with stress, less likely to fall ill and more productive than someone whose idea of exercise is changing the channel using the remote. But before you bellow at your workforce to drop and give you twenty, just remember that this applies every bit as much to you.
    By far the best exercise is that which you incorporate into your life, rather than which you take time out of life to do. If you want to get wealthy, and better yet stick around long enough to enjoy that wealth, then you’d better stop making snide remarks about the sweaties in sports clothes and instead get out and join them.
HERE’S AN IDEA FOR YOU …
    Look for ways to bring sport into your life. That could mean transport—switch to walking or cycling instead of driving—or trying something social like five-a-side footie or tennis. You’re more likely to keep it up if you do it with others. Check out the options and move that body.

22 QUALITY TIME
    ‘Leisure is time for doing something useful; this leisure the diligent man will obtain, but the lazy man never,’ said Franklin, taking leisure seriously.
    We associate the idea of quality time with the time-starved, work-obsessed West Coast Americans trying desperately to tend to their neglected relationships, families and personal lives. Back in the 1750s Franklin was already on the case.
DEFINING IDEA …
    It’s a new age…It’s a new age…‘Creativity’ is the word in