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“You can imagine a career and a life that don't exist; you can build that future you, and as a result your life will change.”
The same design thinking responsible for amazing technology and products, can be used to design and build your life. Design thinking can help us create a healthier, more productive, more fulfilling life—regardless of your age, career, strengths, or personality.
It isn’t about getting more done in less time. It’s about getting the right things done. A systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not. This allows you to make the highest possible contribution towards the things that really matter.
Design your life around your priorities and goals, not around what other people expect from you. No one understands your dreams better than you do and you’ll be miserable if you end up living someone else’s life.
Your Life System will give you direction and tell you where to distribute your time, energy and focus each day. It is a precise blueprint to guide your steps, clarify your ideas and prioritize the actions that will increase your chances of achieving what you want in life.
"Clarity about what matters, provides clarity about what does not."
If you study people who succeed, you will see most of them follow systems, not goals. Goals are reach it and be done objectives. Systems are what you do on a regular basis with the general expectation to improve.
Systems are flexible and they leave you open to being open to better ways of doing things. They are skill based, allowing you to transfer skills to future projects & endeavors. Approach each new opportunity with the question: How likely is this going to improve my broad range of skills and increase my odds of success?
When you focus on systems you accelerate skill development and you leave yourself open to notice opportunities, to pivot and make yourself more likely to be successful. The openness of systems increases the odds of luck finding you and success coming your way.
This doesn’t mean that goals are useless. Goals will be used for planning your progress, and your systems are built for actually making progress. Author of Atomic Habits, James Clear says in the article, Forget About Setting Goals, Focus on This Instead…
"Goals can provide direction and even push you forward in the short-term, but eventually a well designed system will always win. Having a system is what matters. Committing to the process is what makes the difference."
You can use the Iteration Cycle Method developed by Josh Kaufman as a function of each system. An Iteration Cycle is a process that you can use to improve anything over time. It has 6 major steps:
1. Watch What works? What doesn’t?
2. Ideate What could you improve? What are your options?
3. Guess Based on experience, which idea do you think will make the biggest impact?
4. Which? Decide which change to make.
5. Act Make the change.
6. Measure Was it positive or negative? Should you keep it or go back?
Iteration is a cycle—once you measure the results of the change and decide whether or not to keep it, you go back to the beginning to observe what’s happening, and the cycle repeats. For best results, clearly define what you’re trying to accomplish with each iteration.
"I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better."
Values are fundamental beliefs that lie at the core of our personality. High performers in both life and business, are very clear on who they are, what they stand for, and what they believe in. They have clear values which they will not cross for any reason.
Values guide behavior, providing you with a personal code of conduct. When you don’t honor your values, your mental, emotional, and physical state suffers. When you honor your values, you’ll feel and perform at your best, and have greater fulfillment in life.
Many people never take the time to discover their personal values. They have zero clue about what’s actually important to them, and instead focus on what society, culture, and the media values.
CEOsage provides detailed step-by-step instructions on how to discover your personal core values and to use personal values in meaningful ways in 7 Steps to Discover Your Personal Core Values Guide.
You should use a notebook to track these steps with the main focus being to discover the 5-10 things you stand by and value the most.
It’s easy to expect that we already know the answer to what our values are and never bother with this personal discovery process. Instead, adopt the mind of a beginner, and you might be surprised what insights or revelations appear.
If you’re not familiar with working with values, you can check out a list of values to get a feel for your range of options. CEOsage provides an Ultimate List of over 220 Core Values to discover what’s most important to you.
As Scott Jeffrey says in the guide, “Values aren’t selected; they’re discovered. We don’t choose our values. Our values reveal themselves to us.” Instead of picking from this list, he offers exercises to discover your personal values. Be honest with yourself.
Here are some examples of core values:
Having 20-40 values on your list will be too many to be actionable. Combine all the answers from step 2 into a master list of personal values, and group these values under similar themes.
If you have a group of values that include honesty, transparency, integrity, candor, directness, and truth, select a word that best represents the group — for example, integrity could work as the main theme of this group.
While the number of core values differs for each person, the magic range seems to be between 5 and 10. Rank them in the order of importance.
Highlighting values into memorable phrases or sentences helps you articulate the meaning behind each value. For example, if Health is a core value it could represent other values, like energy and vitality. Your values statement might be: “Health: to live with full vitality and energy every day.”
After you have completed your list of core values, take a few days and review your list over. Nothing is set in stone, so feel free to make any changes or adjustments as needed. Ask yourself:
Now that you are clear about your values, you can set your goals, priorities, and create a personal life vision to align with those values. You only do work that you believe in. You focus your time and energy on the things you care most about. Ideally all decisions will be run through your values.
People avoid creating a vision for their lives because they believe the exercise is pointless. Why create a vision when it’s impossible to accomplish those things anyway? High-performers all have a vision for their lives. They seem to know what comes next — like seeing the future.
On the other hand, many people who are stuck in a state of despair—just passing time without joy or aspiration—don’t have a vision for their life. Many of them don’t even have long-term goals.
It’s easy to get distracted, and lose focus on the things that are actually important to us. Your vision won’t get rid of distraction, but it will motivate you to focus on what matters. It will provide clarity—helping you define and evaluate goals, providing a sense of direction and your starting point.
Your vision should aim to answer questions like:
This list is all about what matters most to you and what you want out of your brief time on this planet. Dig deep. The point is to put a stake in the ground to work towards it. You can change your answer whenever you review your life’s vision.
Regardless of your answers, there will be things you want to do or be, and there are resources needed to support those experiences and accomplishments. Your answer to “what matters in life” won’t be perfect.
Here is a list of components to consider when you’re ready to create your personal vision statement:
Core Values what are the 5-10 things you stand by and value the most? How should you live your life according to your values?
Interests What are five to ten things you enjoy doing the most? What elevates you? What can’t you live without What gives your life meaning? What is the real meaning of life?
Areas of Focus What are the major categories of your life that always need your attention?
Strengths What are you naturally good at?
Dreams If this was your last day on earth, what would you regret not doing, seeing, or creating?
Skills What are three areas you strongly want to cultivate skills in that will in some way enhance your life experience?
Profession What are the things you must do to feel fulfilled in your work? What do you want to achieve?
For each category, write down what you want or need from each. Think about the things you want to accomplish or experience, and work backwards to understand how the other categories should support your life’s vision.
1. What do I believe about each category?
2. What exactly do I want in this area of my life?
3. Why do I want that?
4. What do I need to do to get there?
One thing highly successful people have in common: they focus on ONE THING. Humans only have so much willpower, it’s like a battery. It gets drained. By focusing on a whole bunch of the things, the best case scenario is you’ll be average in all of those things.
What is your ONE THING? What do you want most? That is the most important question. This will be your #1 Priority.
Focusing on less helps you achieve more. You don’t have to cut up your time into equal sections, but what you need to do is put the most time, and effort into what’s most important to you.
Your Personal Vision Statement will consist of an overall description of your ideal life, combined with a list of areas that matter most, and high-level goals for each area.
Create a one line sentence that you can rely on to give you a sense of purpose in the world and is alignment with your Vision.
"A mission statement is not something you write overnight...But fundamentally, your mission statement becomes your constitution, the solid expression of your vision and values. It becomes the criterion by which you measure everything else in your life."
Your One Word will help you nail down your personal mottos—the word that captures your purpose, passion, and vision. There is one word that defines who you are:
Generate a list of goals to choose from. Cover all possibilities, think big and define your story. Focus on the areas of life that provide the best return of investment on your time, align with your vision and values, priorities, and what you want most.
SMART Goals is an acronym that you can use to guide your goal setting. To make sure your goals are clear and reachable, each one should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound.
DUMB Goals best selling author Brendan Burchard says that our focus on SMART goals limits us to setting “realistic” goals that fail to inspire the human spirit. He suggests, we should set our sights much higher and focus on “moonshot” goals. Think changing the world. Think putting a man on the moon. Think serving millions of people. Think BIG.
Identify the opportunity cost associated with each goal and work towards your goals by frequently asking the following questions:
"[Setting goals] is the step where you face the fundamental limit: life is a giant smorgasbord of more delicious alternatives than you can ever hope to taste. So you have to reject having some things you want in order to get other things you want more."
Begin With the End In Mind Think about the end before any major decision and this will help you become a more effective person. This allows you to reverse engineer the process—develop the skills you need to learn in order to accomplish what you want.
Keep Your Goals To Yourself The good feeling of telling someone your goals will make it less likely to happen. When you tell someone your goal, there is a process that needs to be done in order to achieve it. Psychologists have found that there is a social reality that the mind is almost tricked into feeling the goal is already done and then since you already felt that satisfaction, you’ll be less likely to have the motivation to complete the goal.
If You Want to Achieve Your Goals, Don’t Focus on Them A goal is always some point in the future. When you set long-term goals and focus on them, you’re conditioning your mind to focus on something which is in the future. Focus completely on what you control, your actions and your behaviors, which will be the building blocks of your goals. What can you do that will get you closer to attaining that goal? Trust the process.
Write your goals down In a Harvard study, graduates were asked if they had written goals with action plans for their achievement. 3% had clearly defined written goals. The study revealed that over a 10-year period the 3% who had written personal goals were 10 times more successful than the other 97 percent who had not.
Scott Adams shares that you should pick a goal and write it down 15x a day in some specific form. This will make it seem as if the universe just starts spitting up opportunities and it may look like they’re coincidences, but whether or not they are is less relevant than the fact that they seem to pop up.
Read Goals Before You Go To Sleep 5 days per week read your goals before you go to sleep, and then when you wake up. These are your goals around health, family, business etc. with expirations dates that you can update periodically.
Goal setting is an iterative process that is achieved through deliberate practice, review and execution. If an action is not helping, remove it.
"What you get by achieving your goals, is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals."
When you deconstruct something, you break the links that holds them together, and you’re free to think about which parts to keep, which parts to change, and which parts to get rid of.
Deconstruct your current life and figure out what is working and what isn’t working for you. Think about and write this down:
1. Which parts do you want to keep?
2. Which parts do you need to change?
3. Which parts do you want to get rid of?
The Habit Scorecard is a simple exercise from Atomic Habits you can use to discover which habits you should change:
To create your Habits Scorecard, start by making a list of your daily habits.
For example, in the morning your list might look like:
Once you have a full list, look at each behavior, and ask yourself, “Is this a good habit, a bad habit, or a neutral habit?” If it is a good habit, write “+” next to it. If it is a bad habit, write “–”. If it is a neutral habit, write “=”.
The marks you give to a particular habit will depend on your situation and your goals. You can categorize your habits by how they will benefit you in the long run. Good habits will have net positive outcomes. Bad habits have net negative outcomes.
Give form to your ideas. If we visualize the life we want to live, we can make it happen. Reconstruct your life that is coherent with who you are, what you stand for, your values, visions, and goals.
On one hand you can have the unsuccessful mindset of, “It’s not like this little decision matters.” In reality, the little decisions that we make is all that matters. Every little decision of yours will be compounded at the end of the year and who you are will be the result of it all.
Ask yourself, with every little decision, is this going to move you closer to that person or not? The answer won’t always be a YES, but be aware of it and try to align more of your little decisions with that vision. The more you can answer yes, the more you can realize that you’re closer to being that person at the end of the year.
If you are producing month to month or week to week improvements, and your daily choices are aligned with your core values, then be patient. We routinely overestimate what we can produce in a week, but we vastly underestimate what we can produce in a few months or years of sustained effort.
“And when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it.”
Go through the Life System Sources to get a better understanding of these core concepts, polish off your personal vision and goals, and create a more detailed version of your Life System Blueprint.