Constraints are everywhere.

No matter where you look and no matter what you do, you're always going to be influenced by constraints. Whether it be a time crunch, lack of funds, or simply a lack of energy, constraints impact nearly everything you do in life. The big constraints are time and money, but even the smaller constraints like weather and the environment have their influence on how you live your life. So what is a person to do with all of these constraints holding him back? Give up? Stop trying? ... or thrive?

Thrive?

That's right, thrive. Instead of letting the all the constraints hold you back, you should allow them to help you focus your energy and achieve your true potential. Nothing would ever get accomplished if you had all the time in the world because you could always do it later. Similarly, if you had unlimited money you'd probably lose most of your desire to work toward a higher education and nearly all of your desire to do any real work at all because you no longer need to work to make a living. You see, with life's time and money constraints you are forced to work to better yourself as well as do real work within society to make a living. Why spend your time fighting these constraints when you could learn to accept them and work together with them toward a better life?

That must be a rhetorical question.

Of course it is; everyone wants a better life. It's just a question of how much effort you're willing to put forth in order to attain it.

So how do you work together with life's constraints?

Ah, now there is a good question, and the answer is: carefully. Balancing all of life's constraints in order to excel is like coordinating an intricate ballet; when done right it looks effortless and when done poorly it looks like a train wreck. However, there are a few simple steps that you can follow in order to make your efforts a little lighter on their toes:

• Don't fight the constraints. Accept them and work together with them.
• Figure out what you want in life and set goals to help you get it.
• Revisit your goals every few months to ensure progress.
• Above all else be happy.

Don't fight the constraints. Accept them and work together with them.

Life's constraints aren't going anywhere any time soon so you might as well stop fighting them. There will always be only 24 hours in a day and, unless you're counting on the lottery, your current financial situation isn't going to make much of a change any time soon. Rather than wishing for a miracle of a few extra hours each day, you need to accept these constraints for what they are. Once you do that you can begin you see the impact of improving all of life's efficiencies. You can't increase the length of your day to 25 hours, but you can increase your time efficiency by doing all of your daily chores in one hour instead of two. On the same token, you can't expect to suddenly have an extra $5,000 each year, but you can increase your financial efficiency by cutting out most of your wasteful spending.

Unfortunately, the hard part about this step isn't just accepting life's constraints; it's about making them work together. If you wanted to increase your financial efficiency by increasing monetary input you're going to have to spend more time working, which ends up decreasing your time efficiency because work now takes more hours out of your day. Similarly, you may decide to increase your universal happiness efficiency by working less and having more free time. As a result your time efficiency will increase because work now takes fewer hours out of your day, but your financial efficiency will decrease because you'll have less income. Once you realize that this intricate balance is always going on in the background of nearly every decision you make, the next step is for you to figure out what you want in life so that you can manipulate this balance in order to achieve the desired result.

Figure out what you want in life and set goals to help you get it.

The only thing worse than setting bad goals is to not have any goals set in the first place. As mentioned in Goals - Know Your Goals in All Aspects of Life, if you don't know your goals in life you're just spinning your metaphorical wheels. If you haven't done so already, you should set both long term and short term goals for all of the different aspects of your life. Doing so will help you prioritize which of life's efficiencies are more important to you at this point in time. For example, if your primary goal right now is to achieve financial stability, you need to accept the fact that you are likely going to have to sacrifice some of your time efficiency in order to put in more work hours so that you can immediately increase your financial efficiency and eventually increase your universal happiness efficiency.

Revisit your goals every few months to ensure progress.

Often people set lofty goals but don't check back in to see how they are doing. As mentioned in Goals - The Devil Is in the Details, little checkpoints along the way in a long term goals help you figure out what you're doing right and wrong, which in the end helps you accomplish your goal much faster. Furthermore, especially after you've made a lot of progress, checkpoints are a great way to take a quick look at everything you've accomplished thus far and give you that essential boost in moral to help you power out that final stretch.

Above all else be happy.

Everything will be for naught if you aren't happy with your life. Certainly it is good practice to work toward a better and happier life, but that doesn't mean that you also have to be unhappy in the present in order to attain that better life. As mentioned in Universal Happiness Efficiency - Priority Number One, universal happiness efficiency is composed of both long term and short term inputs. If you don't take the time to stop and smell the roses and be happy in the present, you might wake up 10 or 15 years down the road and wonder where your life went. Instead, you should slow down your life a little (sacrifice a little of your time efficiency) in order to be happier in everything that you do (increase your universal happiness efficiency).

Best of all, you don't have to trust me on this one. Change around your priorities by placing your universal happiness efficiency over your time and money efficiencies for just one week and see what happens. If the world doesn't feel like a better place at the end of that one week then you either weren't trying or weren't prioritizing enough, or possibly you already live a pretty happy life and just naturally abide by the aforementioned steps. If the latter is the case then congratulations, but if it is the former then I think you need to revisit step one and figure out what is holding you back from a better life.

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