No, I'm not talking about dogspeak. ARFF is an acronym I heard at a recent conference and it caused me to reflect (so I guess the presenter did okay). Despite the presenter's quirkiness and "not really my style" type of guy, Dennis McLoughlin made me think so I give him props for that. The comment below undoubtedly reflect my own thoughts as stemmed from his discusssion...
ARFF stands for the 4 things: achievement, respect, fun, and freedom. He argues that we need all 4 of these components in our life to be satisfied and have some sense of fulfillment. For Achievement, he said adults need to have some feeling of achievement about 80% of the time. We don't have a high fault tolerance and we need to feel like we are accomplishing something. Successful completion of tasks are not the only criteria here. I would argue that some feeling of using God-given talents also fit in. We have to feel we are working toward our potential and using skills to some degree. We need to feel productive.
Respect refers to perceptions of respect from others and I would argue from ourselves. The self respect part may be inextricably linked to the feelings of achievement. We have to feel that we have some measure of expectations from others. We have to feel some value to what we do with our lives.
Fun refers to our need to just relax and unwind. We have to do something to have fun. We need hobbies and non-work related items that give us joy and allow us to step aside from professional duties. We need to just have a good time once in awhile.
The last F refers to Freedom. We need to have some freedom of choice in our lives. This concept may take many forms but we can't always be controlled by others. We need a degree of independence.
McLoughlin says we all need our ARFF to be happy, productive and satisfied people. 3 of 4 won't do it...we need some balance of all 4 components. I won't digress into spiritual components that humans need as well, but many ideas, including some spiritual, are embodied in these ideas. Do you feel that you achieve something substantial with 80% of your time? Do you respect yourself? Do you feel respected by others? Do you spend enough time just having fun? Do you have freedom in your life? Some food for thought...
1 comment:
There was a book called "Margin" we had to read in college (can't say I made it cover to cover), but the author was going in a similar route, but saying we needed balance in the following areas: work, worship, rest and play. i found it pretty interesting at the time... might be worth a re-visit...
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