Complementing the many systems available for getting organised, managing time and tasks, and getting things done, the Whakate Way provides a fresh and holistic look at four essential prerequisites to a balanced, well-designed and fulfilled life: personality; time management; getting things done; and achievement.

Set Up Your Personalised System for Designing Your Life

The Whakate Way is different from typical personal development programs and productivity systems. It does not define a system that tries to be all things to all people; there are no rules engraved in stone. The Whakate Way is a construction kit that contains the building blocks necessary to set up a personalised system for designing your life.

View the presentation of the Whakate Way or read more below about the basic concept, the elements and how you will benefit from following the Whakate Way:

Get Started With the Whakate Way

Our Introspection Handbook addresses the first of the four building blocks for achieving balance in life: Know yourself!

What else you can do:

• Get our e-book “Getting Started With Life Design” – a perfect introduction to life design the Whakate Way
• Join the Club @ WHAKATE
• Read more about the Whakate Way:

The Whakate Way – a Better Way to a Balanced Life

Modern life keeps throwing us a constant, never-ending flow of demands that – if not dealt with quickly and efficiently – tends to grow in urgency and importance until it occupies a major part of our life. Most people who feel overwhelmed and out of control do so because they lack a system to get things done effectively.

However, setting up and maintaining such a system presents its own traps and intricacies. People who are unwilling to invest the necessary time and effort to create such a system can become overwhelmed or fire up a machinery of tools and processes that is neither aligned with their personality nor fine-tuned to the sort of life they live. Those with a tendency to procrastinate may also find a wonderful playground that allows them to constantly refine the system without getting things done. They either do too little or too much, and often the wrong things.

Your Personality! Your Time! Your Life!

The Whakate Way is meant to help. It will not try to teach you everything that can be learned about time management, productivity and personal effectiveness. It will impart just enough of what will be useful to you and your life situation.

What makes the Whakate Way unique is that it does not define a system that tries to be all things to all people; there is no set of rules engraved in stone. The Whakate Way is more like a construction kit that contains the building blocks necessary to set up a personalised system for designing your life.

The Whakate Way will allow you to spend the maximum amount of time living your life, rather than organising and perfecting it.

Your Path to a Balanced Life

The Whakate Way consists of four building blocks:

• Know yourself
• Make use of your time
• Get organised
• Embrace your roles

We recommend seeing this as a four-step process and following it in that order. However, depending on individual situations, you may apply them in any order.

Life is never static. You change, the people in your life change, as do your life circumstances. You may want to reiterate the steps above at each major change in your life. In this sense, The Whakate Way is a life-long path of learning and growth.

» Know Yourself

Efforts to become more effective must start with a sufficient knowledge of your self. You need to be able to identify your values and your beliefs in order to derive the goals you want to pursue in your life. You also need to understand your view on life, the extent to which you feel comfortable assuming control over it, taking responsibility for it, as well as how assertive you are. This knowledge will prevent you from wasting precious time by pursuing impossible goals or goals that deep down are not worthwhile.

We also believe that there is no one size fits all. Every person is different; every life situation is different. As your life changes, learning about your personality is important for selecting your approach to personal organisation, making the best use of your time, changing your habits, and achieving personal growth.

» Make Use of Your Time

Time itself cannot be managed. We cannot store unneeded time from leisurely days for later use on busy ones. We all get an allocation of 24 hours each day, regardless of whether we need it that day or not.

What you can manage is how you use your time. Living a balanced life is not about doing more in less time, but rather about doing what you really want to do – most of the time. To achieve that balance you need to gain control of your time, so that you have enough to get the right things done.

» Get Organised

You can make a significant difference in what you get done by planning your actions and putting a system in place. A system in this sense does not mean a computer system or an electronic gadget. On the contrary, the most effective systems are often just a set of good
habits helping you stay on top of things. Even today, pen and paper can still beat sophisticated electronics. On the other hand, when mature tools are available, it would be a mistake to not make use of them.

Unfortunately, many people are under the impression that they already know what they need to be doing and that planning only wastes their time. However, there are many ways to plan and depending on you, your job and your circumstances, almost any day can become more effective through a well-thought out structure.

» Embrace Your Roles

Each of us plays more than one role in life, though we are seldom aware of all of them. We are spouses, parents, friends, and professionals: We may play a role in the neighbourhood committee, or in our children’s school, or in the clubs we belong to, to name just a few.

Each role we play makes demands on us and giving each role the necessary attention is often not easy. Sometimes we may have taken on too many roles, or we need to be aware of the fact that we are adding a role to our life, and we must also be able to actively adjust the mix of roles and how we deal with each of them.

Giving an order of importance to our roles, budgeting time for each one, abandoning roles when we have become entangled in too many, and making time for roles we want to take on, are all crucial to a balanced and well-designed life. An ounce of awareness is worth a pound of well-being when it comes to spending our time and our life doing the things we really value.

Get Started With the Whakate Way

Our Introspection Handbook addresses the first of the four building blocks for achieving balance in life: Know yourself!

What else you can do:

• Get our e-book “Getting Started With Life Design” – a perfect introduction to life design the Whakate Way
• Join the Club @ WHAKATE