P/PC Balance | How To Be Effective In All Areas of Life

P/PC is a pattern of effectiveness that is in natural law and is all around us. If you do not keep your P PC in balance, things start to go wrong.

As I continue to do my best to build my businesses, the thought of the P/PC balance comes to mind as my business gets larger.

The P/PC balance is a principle that anyone can use in their everyday life. What P/PC actually comes from is the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven R. Covey.

I've wondered how I could keep my P/PC balance in the proper order. P/PC balance is a pattern of effectiveness that is in natural law and is all around us. P stands for Production and the PC stands for Production Capability.

The P/PC balance comes into play when a person does not mange their time, resources, and energy well. This is when the P/PC balance gets thrown off. Let's look further into how we can keep our P/PC Balance aligned well.

What Is the P/PC Balance?

P = Production

PC = Production Capabilities

Production is a noun and is the action of making or manufacturing from components or raw materials, or the process of creating something.

Production Capabilities is the ability and capacity to make or manufacture something from the raw materials.

Listen to the Podcast Episode on the P/PC Balance

Here is what it means in P/PC Balance:

Production is your ability to produce anything in your life. Production Capability is how much you can produce in the limited time you have each day, week, month, year.

For example: We all have the ability and capacity to create things ourselves. That could be working a job, making things to sell on Etsy, writing a essay for your college classes, etc. This is our Productivity and is our ability to create or make something in our lives.

The amount of, or how much we can produce is the capability we have to make more of it.

How the story of the Goose with the Golden Egg explains the P/PC Balance

A great story that explains the P/PC Balance principle is the story of the goose that laid the golden eggs. Aesop’s fable shows us that our effectiveness will suffer if we don’t apply this principle to our lives.

Aesop’s fable of the Goose and the Golden Egg is the story of a poor farmer who finds out that his pet goose just laid a glittering golden egg. At first the farmer thinks it is a fake and a trick on him so he throws it aside.

Then the farmer takes it to have it appraised instead to make sure he is not making a mistake in case it actually was gold.

To his surprise, the farmer finds that the egg is actually pure gold! He is so excited feels incredibly lucky to have such a great goose that produces golden eggs.

The next morning, he wakes up early, runs to the nest to find another solid golden egg! Day after day, his amazing goose lays another golden egg for him and he becomes wealthy.

Impatience and Greed Take Over

After a short while, the farmer becomes greedy and impatient. His increased wealth made him even more crave and desire more things that only his golden eggs could buy.

Not wanting to wait day after day for the golden eggs, the farmer does something to try and get what he wants now.

He decides to kill the goose and get all the eggs at one time from inside of it. When he opens the goose, he finds there are no golden eggs inside.

It was the goose the made the eggs each day and not that the eggs where just kept inside.

Now, the farmer does not have any eggs and he has destroyed the goose that produced and created them each day.

True Effectiveness with P/PC Balance

Learning from the Goose Who Laid the Golden Egg

Aesop’s story of the goose and the golden egg shows true effectiveness is when “what is produced” (the golden egg) and “production capability” (the goose) work together well.

Overly Production Focused

If you focus on the golden eggs and neglect the goose, you may eventually kill your own goose that is producing the golden eggs.

Overly Production Capacity Focused

If you only take care of the goose with not thought of the golden egg, you will not be able to feed, clothe, or shelter you or the goose.

The moral of the story and one we should take away from Aesop’s fable of the Goose and the Golden Egg is that we must take care of and manage both P and PC.

By focusing too much and neglecting the other, your P/PC Balance will be off and either one will suffer.

“To maintain the P/PC Balance, the balance between the golden egg (production) and the health and welfare of the goose (production capability) is often a difficult judgment call. But I suggest it is the very essence of effectiveness.”

– Steven R. Covey

Areas of Your Life to Apply the P/PC Balance

There are three assets that you have in this life:

1. Physical Asset in P/PC Balance

Physical assets like a lawn mower, power tools, bakers oven, computer, etc. are all physical assets that help you to produce.

When brand new, these items work very well and as intended. If you do not maintain, fix, and update these items as you use them, their ability to produce will decrease over time.

Eventually the asset becomes useless.

2. Financial Asset in P/PC Balance

When you invest your money, you have your principal (the money you put in) and you have interest (money you make with your principal).

If you want to increase your standard of living by taking from the principal, you decrease the amount of interest you make each month basically killing the goose that is laying golden eggs.

3. Human Asset in P/PC Balance

With physical and financial assets, you own and or control these. Much different than with Human assets.

The person you are working with is another human being with different beliefs, knowledge, experiences, etc.

If a married couple only focuses on the golden eggs and its benefits, they eventually become cold, hard, insensitive and inconsiderate to each other. They do not nurture the relationship to make it better.

Financial P/PC Balance Explained

Working a Job

We all need to provide for ourselves and our families as we strive to become successfully unemployed by learning how to invest in real estate.

In your job, you need to get better and do better. There is always room for improvement and advancement comes from improving yourself to be a better employee.

If you only focus on your paycheck, what you are making now and neglect personal development, networking, and growing professionally, then eventually you will be replaced by someone else who is better.

However, if you only focus on growth, learning new things, and developing skills and not actually accomplish things in your job, then you be of no use to your boss.

You never get anything done and that is not what your boss is paying you for.

Running a Business

In running a business, you need to keep your customers happy AND make a profit. If you focus on your golden eggs, you may want to start controlling your expenses too much and not focus on your product.

If you focus too much on your profits by watering down your products your customers buy, they will find better products elsewhere and take their business away from you.

If you focus too much on your customers and not your employees, you are focusing on the egg and not the goose.

Your employees are going to be unhappy and eventually leave just like your customers.

Real Estate Investing

Each rental property that you own is your own personal goose. Each property lays a golden egg for you each month in for form of passive income.

If you do not maintain, update, repair, or keep up the look of the property, eventually your property will stop making money.

You need to take care of your own personal goose that lays golden eggs for you each month.

If you do not also buy properties that make you money, and only focus on the property, you will not have enough money to cover the expenses.

You must buy the properties that make you money each month and not have a property for the sake of just having the property.

Physical P/PC Balance

Personal Health

You already have the ability to produce just as you are. If your personal capacity for production is currently at a 5 out of 10, you will only produce anything at a 5.

By only focusing on what you produce (at a capacity of 5) then you miss out on the other 5 you could produce if you also grow yourself.

In the short term, you may produce at a 5 but eventually, if you don’t take care of yourself, your 5 may become a 4, then a 3, then eventually a 0.

If you also maintain your health by exercise, eating healthy, and growing mentally, you may begin to produce at a 6, or a 7, or maybe even a 10.

However, if you do not produce anything at all, and only focus on your health, you are at a production of 0. By only focusing on your health you will eventually not have any food, clothing, etc. to keep you going.

Physical Assets

Stephen R Covey shares the example of his lawnmower that he used for a few years. For the short term, it ran well and did the job exactly as it was supposed to.

But he did not maintain it, repair it, or take care of it.

After a few years you realize he needed to take the lawnmower in to get service. After taking it in and fixing it as best as the mechanic could, the machine was half its capacity and could not perform any better because he did not take care of it.

Now the machine was almost worthless.

Or, imagine that you have a car that you drive to work in order to make money to live. When you first buy it, it runs well and does the job correctly.

A few years go by and the only thing you do is add gasoline to it to make it run, neglecting changing the oil, replacing tires, changing the filters, etc..

Now you have a car that may not even run properly or even be safe because the engine is severely damaged, the brakes are completely gone, and the tires are about to fall off.

Relational P/PC Balance

Marriage P/PC Balance

When people get married, they do so because they love each other. After some time, the love tends to get overshadowed by things, events, and life that happens.

Couples tend to focus on these things that happened to them rather than their relationships.

Because their relationships were strong in the very beginning, they ride on that wave of feelings and emotions not knowing that if they do not nurture that relationship to strengthen it, it will eventually fade.

Likewise, if all the couple in the marriage does is look into each other’s eyes all day not managing the household, making money to provide for the food they need to eat, or even taking care of themselves, eventually they lose the relationship and themselves at the same time.

Parenting

Imagine you have a son who really wants a puppy for Christmas. You inform him that he needs to take care of it by cleaning up after it, feeding it, and picking up the waste in the yard.

The P is the production of having a clean yard and a well fed puppy. Now suppose that you want him to do all of the work, that is the PC, production capability.

Your son is the goose which is the assets that produces the golden egg.

If you have P and PC in proper balance and alignment, he takes care of the puppy well, feeds it, and cleans up after it, without being reminded, because he is committed and has a discipline to stay with the commitment.

He becomes a valuable asset and a goose that can produce those golden eggs for you.

If you focus only on production, which is cleaning up after the puppy and taking care of it, you might find yourself nagging him daily to take care of it.

It may even escalate your conversation to threats or yelling at your son to get your desired outcome which is the golden egg. This would undermine the health and the welfare of the goose that lays the golden egg.

How to Apply the P/PC Balance To Your Life

A balance between production and production capability. If you focus too much on productivity it could result in ruined health, torn up and worn-down machine, broken relationships, and empty bank accounts.

If you focus too much on production capability where you are endlessly going to school and always learning but never producing.

Or being a person who runs five hours a day bragging about the 20 more years of life it creates not knowing that is spending his entire life on running rather than living his life with other people.

Excessive focus on either P or PC will leave and imbalance in your life and things will suffer.

Maintain a Proper P/PC Balance In Your Life

In order to maintain the proper P/PC Balance life is usually a judgment call on your part. It is not an easy judgment call but it depends on you to see what you would be potentially neglecting if you do not balance the P/PC effectively.

The main goal is to balance the short term with long-term results and act accordingly. This balances studying hard to get the good grade and paying the price to get a good education.

In doing this, you will have balance in your life and not be burning the candle at both ends as they say. You do not want to focus only on the goose nor do you want to only focus on the golden egg. Having a balance between the two is a way to be successful in life.

Putting It All Together With the Goose Who Laid the Golden Egg and P/PC Balance

In your life, you need to be the one to keep track of those P/PC balances and imbalances. Only you can know when these are getting out of alignment and out of balance.

Just like the farmer should have known that by killing the goose, the goose would no longer produce golden eggs.

In your relationships, watch out for strained relationships to see what possibly could have been the reason for the strain. It may very well be a P/PC imbalance where you are favoring one or the other.

You could be more gold egg oriented wanting the result but not developing the relationship to help the person also want the result.

In your finances, if you only focus on the production and spending of the golden egg, you eventually stop producing anything. All the money that you bring in is not reinvested or spent wisely then you eventually don’t have any money at all.

Or if you focus all on production capability and never actually produce anything, you will not have the business anymore.

In your health, the P/PC balance will be noticed if you begin to get sick more often, have aches and pains more often or stop performing as well as you should be or normally do perform.

Getting back on track in putting the P/PC balance back in place will help you to be more aligned.

Examine your finances, assets, and relationships to see where there may be P/PC balance or imbalance. Look to see what is the production and what is the production capability in the scenario and see which one may be misaligned.

Let me know how you stay well balanced in the P/PC balance. Leave a comment below.