I'm Crafting my 100-Year Life?Plan

#newyearresolutions (No, I’m not pivoting to selling insurance.)

This new year, I’m not making goals for 1 year. I’m thinking looong term…

In today’s fast-paced world, it’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of daily life and lose sight of what truly matters. That’s why I’m embarking on an incredible journey — creating a 100-Year Life Plan! While I’ve spent the last few years studying the potential impact of disruptive forces on the future of countries and businesses, I haven’t stopped to consider what that meant for me and my family. This plan will help me (and hopefully others) to identify the things that are most important to me, consider how the world might change over my children’s lifetime, and figure out how best to prepare for the future that is to come. Let me tell you a little bit more about this exciting journey.

Why 100 Years?

I got some help from Jasper for this article. Jasper is an AI that wrote most of the first paragraph of this blog post (AI-written text italicised). I could even give it feedback the way I would to an intern, and it would incorporate it scarily well… in seconds. It’s not just the fact that generative AI is here, it is the fact that it is accessible to everyone. A poignant reminder of how significant change is underway — not even over the next 100 years, but right now.

So why 100 years? Planning 100 years in advance might sound impossible, but it’s actually a great exercise to help you think not only more strategically and long-term, but also more introspectively and sentimentally.

100 years will cover the lifetime of my living children. A typical girl born in Singapore today can expect to live more than 97 years. It is not too long that I no longer know anyone in that timeframe. 100 years will surpass my own lifetime, forcing me to think of the legacy I leave behind. What family traditions will stand the test of time and what do I want to create? How would I want to be remembered — what did my life stand for?

While my finance friends might beg to differ, 100 years makes the value of what I earn and own today meaningless. The value of what I create and the lives I might touch matter more. Sure, I could aim to amass wealth that can enrich my family for generations to come. But the odds of being wealthier than average are, by definition, slim. There are too many ways that riches can be lost or taken away over a century-long period. Better to put effort in advocating for a Rawlsian society where the outcomes are palatable regardless of your station in life.

A 100-year timeframe guides a line of inquiry to better understand the world. What might the world in 100 years look like? Or to avoid going down a dystopian train of thought, what must the world in 100 years look like for my children to be living well by the end of their lifespan? What hope can we get from the past 100 years that such a world will prevail? What warnings might the last century have? 100 years strips it down to the bare essentials of what’s important — whether there will be flying cars, or not, is not relevant.

How the AI proposes we go about this:

The Process of Creating My Plan

Creating my own 100-Year Personal Life Plan has been an incredibly thoughtful process. First, I identified my core values — what matters most to me in life — and then I brainstormed how those values might manifest themselves over the course of a century. From there, I began breaking down my plan into shorter time frames so that I could clearly see which goals need immediate attention and which ones can wait until later. Finally, I created a timeline of milestones so that I always have something tangible to strive towards as I move forward with this journey.

What You Can Gain From Doing This Exercise

Creating your own 100-Year Personal Life Plan isn’t just about having fun — it’s also about taking ownership of your future and ensuring that you’re setting yourself up for success no matter what life throws at you. By engaging in this type of strategic thinking and goal setting exercise, you’ll be able to better understand what matters most to you and develop concrete strategies for achieving it. Plus, it’s never too early (or late!) to start thinking about your future!        

The AI suggested a pretty systematic way of going about creating any plan, and reasonably compelling motivations to do it. But its approach is more suited for a 100-day plan rather than a 100-year one. I’m retaining my agency (and intellectual creativity) over this section, so here is my own approach.

The Process of Creating My Plan (Michelle’s version)

Taking this mental exercise seriously requires significant research compared to your typical new year’s resolutions. These are the questions I think need to be examined to come up with a credible plan, and roughly in the order I think they need to be answered:

1. Technology/Futures: What will the world be like in 100 years? Where might some of the driving forces like climate change and technology take us?
2. History: How has the world changed in the past 100 years? Do we have reason for optimism or pessimism?
3. Education: How should I raise my children? What are skillsets that will be relevant over the next century? What will not?
4. Investment: How should I spend my time and resources?
5. Family: How do I find joy and happiness? What is the value of a family? What traditions are important to retain? What traditions could I come up with for my own family? What do I/ we (as a family) need to get through tough times?
6. Legacy: What is a life well-lived? What matters at the end of the day?

What You Can Gain From Doing This Exercise (Michelle’s version)

These are all the big questions in life, and may well take a lifetime to answer. As with any new year’s resolution, there’s a lot of enthusiasm at the start, but to persevere with answering these questions requires lots of discipline, commitment, as well as, moral support from others! I have no answers at this moment. But hopefully by sharing my thought process and inviting you along with my journey, I’ll get to learn from fellow travellers into the future.

Ending with some words of encouragement from the AI

No matter where you are in life right now — whether you’re just getting started or well on your way — creating a 100-year personal life plan is an incredibly rewarding exercise that can help guide you toward achieving all of your long-term goals and dreams. It may seem daunting at first, but by breaking it down into smaller steps it becomes much more manageable! So why not give it a try? You never know what kind of amazing things could come out of this journey! Good luck!        

Written by Michelle Khoo, with the help of Jasper.ai. Views expressed are my own and do not represent the views of my organization.