Do you design your life with a Life Plan or do you fill your day with busyness that don’t take you closer to your goals? Do you live an authentic and fulfilling life? Do you take responsibility for your decisions and proactively steer your life to the direction you wish it to go? Do you know what REALLY matters to you? These are some of the questions I constantly ask myself.
Many of us have detailed training plans, career and financial plans. And yet, very few people have plans that encompass other aspects of their life – like relationships, creative pursuits, or spirituality. On top of this, the plans we have rarely intersect.
We view them as separated compartments instead of deeply interconnected. It creates a DISSATISFYING IMBALANCE. Our career flourishes at the expense of our health and marriage. Our fitness skyrockets, but we lose touch with our community because we spend every moment at the gym.
Last month I read the book “Living Forward“, from Michael Hyatt and Daniel Harkavy. It shared a proven plan to stop drifting and get the life you want. I thought I had a clear life plan, but after I read the book, I realized that my plans were more short-term actions without knowing where it would lead me in the long term. Below I will share concrete tips from the book with some of my insights after building my own Life Plan.
Benefits of designing your life with a Life Plan
To design your life with a Life Plan will allow you to take responsibility for your life. It will help you proactively and intentionally make decision that lead you on the direction you want to go. It will act as a reference point you can use in times of uncertainty. And it will empower you to stand up against those external influences that lure you away from the life you want to live.
We all have 52 Saturdays every year. Not very much. If you spend half of it racing around and consumed by busyness and preoccupied stress, that means you will have even less time to do what really matters to you.
Most of us spend a disturbing large portion of our lives meeting other people’s expectations. It can be extremely difficult cut through the noise and stick to our own priorities. Things get even more difficult if you’re unclear on what your priorities are in the first place. If you don’t know what your priorities are, how will you know when you’re being drawn away from them?
When do you need a Life Plan
When you need to make pivotal decisions in life. A Life Plan will be a great support document for you to take an intentional decision. Almost like a GPS.
Your Life Plan will help you identify your priorities, set goals, and create a strategy to actualize them.
What does a Life Plan look like
A life plan is a document, between 6-12 pages long, that you write, describing what your ultimate life looks like. This vision will help you identify your personal priorities and create an Action Plan to support each of them.
A Life Plan is a living document and should be updated periodically. Like a GPS, it will help you evaluate where you are, where you want to go and how to get there. This way you can correct the course if necessary.
We want different things depending on which stage of life we are. So, it is important to re-evaluate your life plan periodically. A Life Plan is a living document and should be updated when your life situation changes (getting married, having kids, getting divorced, moving abroad, etc).
How to create a Life Plan
Step 1: Start at the end
What will your legacy be? In other words, how do you want to be remembered when you die? Though question. But this will allow you to design your life to achieve that.
Write your own eulogy. Be brutally honest. This will reveal the areas that are going well and the ones that need more attention. Think who will be in your funeral. What do you want the key people in your life to remember and feel about you? Be specific. Are those memories rich and loving? Or do they fall a little flat? This will reveal what’s currently missing in your life.
Create a list of Legacy Statements by identifying how you want the important groups of people in your life to member you. They might be your family, friends, work colleagues, etc. For example: I want Chalie to remember the laughter, tears and quiet moments of tenderness we shared.
Step 2: Determine your priorities by evaluating your Life Accounts
What’s most important to me? To answer it authentically, you need to put aside everyone else’s ideas about how you should live your life and reflect on what truly matters to you.
What are your life accounts? Typically, they fall under 3 headings:
1- Being (intellect, spirituality and physicality)
2- Relating (relationships and communities you participate in)
3- Doing (work finances, hobbies and pursuits)
Choose 5-12 that matter to you most. You may have several accounts that fall under the same heading (ex: under relationship will include your kids, parents, partner, work colleagues, etc). Identify what is going well and what needs more attention. I decided to use metrics scoring each with points 1 to 3. Where 1 means it needs more focus, 2 means it is developing, and 3 it’s successful. You will notice that the ones scoring 3 is where you normally dedicate more time and resources.
I found this to be easier to be done in excel, so you can easily filter in different ways. But you can also use the format done by Michael Hyatt. Here is the free template.
Once you have listed them out, categorized into which accounts they belong to and evaluated how successful you are in each of them, then it’s time to arrange them and compare.
Firstly, you will arrange them in order of priority. What’s most important and really matter to you. Later, you will arrange them based on your scores. Compare your priority list with the list you gave points to. This will reveal whether of not you are investing your time in the right priorities.
Step 3: Make and commit to a clear course of action
Figure it out How to reach your goals. It starts by revisiting your life accounts. Look at each one and define what your primary responsibility for that account is.
For example:
To my husband: My Purpose is to love and support him every day as my soulmate and best friend.
To my kids: My purpose is to love them unconditionally everyday while educating, encouraging, and building their self-confidence so they can drive their life to be what they want.
Make an action plan to get better in the points that are your priority.
Dedicate a full day in the next 2 weeks to make your life plan. You will need to connect with your feelings. You need to be able to immerse yourself. Work this day where you will not be interrupted. Ideally in a new place (a hotel somewhere inspiring, a garden or even the local library). Leave your fears and inhibitions at home and WRITE A 5 to 10 PAGES that answer the 3 life plan questions. Don’t aim for perfection. The purpose for this is to trust the process, pay attention to your heart and tap into your authenticity.
To implement your Life Plan, you must take responsibility for how you spend your time.
There are 3 methods to reclaim your time and carry out your Action Plans.
1- Adopt the role “triage officer” when managing your calendar. Evaluate how your appointments relate to your Life Accounts priorities. Cancel anything that doesn’t support your Life Plan. Then re-schedule anything that isn’t essential so you can attend to your crucial priorities first.
2- Draw up how your week would look like if you ONLY focused on your priorities. Map out family time, social engagements, work, fitness, well-being, religion, etc. all events you need to attend to make your accounts flourish. Use this a s a guide to plan your coming weeks as close to it as possible.
3- Practice to saying NO to the requests that don’t align with your priorities. This can be a huge challenge if you are worried to disappoint people. But by doing things that don’t support your priorities, you will be disappointing yourself as you get carried away in that riptide of other people’s agendas.
REMEMBER: The goal is to follow the trail of YOUR choosing and live the way YOU want to.
Your life plan will only serve you if you put into action!
Review regularly your life plan (every quarter) and set smaller quarterly goals to take you closer to your bigger priorities. Check on weekly basis the development and make course corrections when needed.
A Life Plan is a living document. Read your plan out loud every day for 90 days. This will cement the ideas in your head instead of getting dusty on a bookshelf.
Reflect what you have achieved in the past year. And plan for the next one.
In a world of overwhelming demands, it’s easy to get carried off course. But your life is too valuable to be let carried away on other people’s agendas. To live the life you really want, you need to accept responsibility for your choices. Designing your life with a Life Plan will keep you focused on what you cherish most and help you formulate the actions you need to take to support your priorities. A solid and relevant Life Plan is the best road map to life you can have.
Actionable advice: Introduce Life Plans to your close friends and workplace. This will increase their engagement and overall joy because their whole lives will be better supported by their plans.
