Plan Your Life With This Simple Method
In the last 5 months, I've started the following projects:
Looking back, I realize I did this because I suddenly had more free time on my hands than I knew what to do with.
The flip side was that I soon realized I had TOO many ideas I wanted to work on, and that I didn't really have the time to do all of them. I needed to understand how much time each aspect of my life was taking, how much time I wanted to give to it, whether that could be optimized (and if so, how) and finally- whether I could do more or not.
That really was the basis of starting this journey which then morphed into a more 'macro' exercise to plan my year. I did this at the start of January 2023 and have been following it for the past 1 month.
It definitely has benefited me and helped me make better decisions over the past month.
In a nutshell- before I dive into WHAT i did, a quick note on how reading this might help you:
Now, you might be someone who prefers to not plan their life this way, or think about stuff in so much detail. You probably will not get much value from this post.
For those of you who are still interested, here is my exact step by step process:
Step 1: Write Down A Professional and Personal Vision
What outcome do you want to achieve over the next 1/2/5/(insert number here) years? Do you want to be rich and famous and living in a mansion?
Do you want a lovely family with 3 kids, a cat, a dog and a parrot?
Do you want to be the top-most executive at your firm or start a company that allows you plenty of free time?
Write it down. Writing helps us think better, crystallize our thoughts and communicate better. Which is why I am a big fan of writing thoughts down.
Remember though- that you are not writing to rigidly stick to what you've initially thought. No, your 'vision' can change. It will change, in fact, over time. You are allowed to have a new vision every day for the rest of your life (though that might be exhausting).
That's fine. The point is that we must start somewhere.
If you've never drafted a vision statement, here's the things I think about:
Eg: My professional vision is: "To be self-employed, doing intellectually demanding, creative work that provides sufficient income to my family so that we don't worry about money ever"
My personal vision is: "To always be learning and growing as a person, and contribute to humanity everything I possibly can"
I still am not happy with the wordsmithing and will probably revisit the above statements and make them clearer over time- but you get the idea.
So- I suggest you take a quick pause here. Think for a minute and write down your personal and professional vision.
Step 2: Convert Vision Into Goals
A vision is your 'direction' in which to start walking. Goals are the milestones that keep you on track and allow you to measure progress.
Right now, you know where you want to go, but before you start walking, you need to have a clear idea of the field ahead and how you will navigate it. That's where goals come in.
Convert your vision into goals. For instance here are my professional goals for the year:
My personal goals:
At this point, I'll ask you to take a few minutes- write down your goals.
Also- remember to think about and write down anti-goals, i.e: what are the tradeoffs you are NOT willing to make in order to achieve your goals.
For instance, one of my anti goals is that I do not want to let go of my health, regardless of how busy I am. Hence, no matter what's going on- I must work out 4x a week.
So- go ahead, write your goals and anti-goals.
Step 3: Convert Goals Into Tasks and Put Everything On A TimelineNow, things start taking shape.
Start writing down, in as much detail and as briefly as you can think, exactly what you must do to achieve each goal. Convert this into tasks.
Eg: I want to be more athletic. This means I must do a variety of exercises- cardio, weightlifting, strength and conditioning as well as mobility. So, I've told myself that every week, I will lift weights 3-4 times, do cardio at least once and focus on strength and mobility at least 2-3 workouts a week. I'll mix and match the above aspects to ensure I do everything consistently, build a habit and don't spend too long in the gym either.
Notice that my goals aren't around- "get to a particular weight or get to 10% body fat"- that's for those who already have found a repeatable process to their destination. Right now, as I am taking the first steps, all I care about is consistency and habit formation. A lot of this, James Clear talks about in Atomic Habits as well.
Do this for all your goals, convert them into tasks. Once done, now comes the most important part.
Put everything on a timeline. Have deadlines by which you want to achieve each individual task as well as the overall goal.
You can choose to do it in an excel sheet, on a piece of paper that you stick up on the wall- whatever you choose.
I use a Miro Board and a Google Sheet for this exercise. See the photos below
Step 4: Plan Each Day Of Your Upcoming Week
Now that you have a timeline ready- you simply need to review your document and plan, say, every Sunday evening for 15 minutes, what you will do daily for the next week.
Convert each task into a daily action point- decide when you will do what, and become a student of your calendar (I picked this phrase up from David Meltzer years ago, who is a big proponent of this).
For instance, I have a google sheet with 7 tasks laid out that I must do every day. I log into the sheet whether I succeeded or failed in doing those, each day. That shows me a trend of what's working, what isn't working and what I must do better.
Each task is mapped to my goals, and hence, I know that if I execute on these tasks every single day and review periodically, say, once a month- I'll make progress. The idea is to remove the cognitive load of 'planning' from day to day and only do it once a week or once a month.
So now- I'll encourage you to plan your upcoming week. Think about what you need to do, how long it is likely to take and when you will do it.
Step 5: Set An Alarm To Review.
My first review date (31st Jan 2023) is coming up as I write this article. I have decided that I will conduct a review every month-end to check my progress as well as review the goals and tasks for the next month. This keeps you in touch with the macro picture and ensures you don't get lost in the micro.
Step 6: Rinse and Repeat.
I intend to follow this system for the rest of this year. I highly doubt that this system is optimal- and sincerely hope that I will improve upon it over the year.
I also doubt that this exact system will be useful for everyone- but it might be for some, which is why I am writing this.
Even if the method doesn't enthuse you, the aim of this exercise is, simply, to be intentional about life. It's the first time in my life that I am thinking about my own life in such a way.
Thinking macro->micro about each aspect of my life was extremely time consuming and made my brain hurt for a bit. However, I am glad I did it because it allowed me to be much clearer about how to lead my life.
For instance, I started this article by explaining how, in Dec 2022, I felt like I'd taken on more projects than I could handle. When I completed this entire exercise, I realized that I actually was spending just about 20 hours/week doing these projects, and would over time, optimize and reduce my time involvement in each.
This made me confident to go ahead and apply for internships because I knew what levers to pull exactly in my life in order to manage my time better.
I could only do that because I had a quantifiable way to measure where my time goes.
That's about all I have to say on this matter, however, if you are interested, I am also sharing templates of how I actually did it.
How I Did This Exercise
I did everything I described above with a website called Miro and a Google Sheet.
Miro basically is a virtual whiteboard. Here is the template I designed on Miro. You can copy it into your own Miro board and build out your own.
Each chit (blank in the template) should be filled up with a goal/task. Notice how I have drawn arrows between each goal/task so that you can see how everything ties in together.
Why did I do this?
Because we tend to forget our goals! No matter how passionately we might feel, we need to remind ourselves regularly about all our goals and how each task fits into the larger picture. This is just a simple way to do that.
As you can see in the images above, I also have a simple google sheet in which I log my daily output. This is all I review on a daily basis.
And that's it!
That's all there is to it. Go ahead and build your own plan for the year or years ahead.
Remember to review it regularly and be flexible with how your thinking and outlook evolves.
Let me know if this helps you, or if you want to discuss any of the implementation steps that might not be clear.