Introduction
The future. One hell of an exciting but simultaneously scary aspect of life. Don't you think?
Cynical people would say that "Man plans, and God laughs". While it is true that life is unpredictable, you are able to at least shape different things into a certain direction.
My goal for you is to get excited about the future when thinking about it. In my experience, it improves your life's quality by a big margin. While you could claim that most of it depends on your financial situation, I believe, it is more about the potential upside that you face when thinking about the future. Basically, your mindset should be in general:
"What can I gain? What is expecting me?" instead of "What could I lose/do I need to maintain? What have I already got behind me?"
It does not mean that you stop being afraid, but that you improve your way of coping with it. I will give you an example:
In my mind, when I looked at my Rainy Sunday goals for last year, I was at this point in time way ahead in subscribers, attention and feedback. Nevertheless, I know exactly that I did not try everything I could to increase the metrics. There is so much more I could, can and even should do to improve it. Still, I know that good things take time and I do not feel comfortable with going "out loud" yet because I have different priorities at the moment.
Therefore, I am completely fine with it. It is more important to me to bring my thoughts "to paper" and invest in my long-term legacy. From time to time, it happens that somebody googles me, finds my website, and then contacts me about how well they receive the things I write. That is why I am confident that it will increase over time.
So, let's get you a bit more excited about the future:
First, I will repeat what I wrote last week, quoting Keith Ferrazzi from "Never Eat Alone":
"The future is dynamic and not fully in your control. Celebrate that fact instead of fighting it, and life gets a lot more interesting. Keep your eyes open, be humble and generous, and save time and attention for the spontaneous, the quirky, and the left field."
If you prefer the Business field, I like to quote Niels Pflaeging, who writes in his book "Complexitools":
"Complexity is the measure for the amount of surprises which you need to consider as possible. [...] Dynamic is the total amount of surprises an organization can sustain."
Finally, if I head into the area of philosophy, I like to quote one of my favorite authors (holding a PhD in statistics) Nassim Nicholas Taleb:
Envisioning your future self
As already mentioned, the future is unpredictable. But at least the direction of where you are going is your decision. It is based on the question:
"What do I want?" as well as "What type of person do I want to be?"
To answer the latter, imagine a day in the future. Imagine, how your daily routine looks like.
- How do you wake up?
- What is your morning routine you go through?
- Are you heading to work or are you working from home?
- Is it an apartment where you live within a big city or is it a house in the countryside?
Continue this envisioning procedure until you feel some kind of satisfaction. Now, focus on what this person looks like, how other people would talk about this person, what traits he/she inherits...
Just to mention it: Don't focus on the gaps to the person you currently are or on how to get there. It is just a neutral view on who you want to be.
If you have done the "Present" exercises from last week already, you can reuse your results because they should match your envision of your future self.
If you have not, write down the main themes that come up. Are they more related to having a family? Having a certain kind of status? Whatever it is, write down the themes as categories so we can specify them later. It clarifies what is important to you.
Quick introduction to PARA
The PARA Methodology by Tiago Forte is originally focussing on handling digital information based on Tiago's flagship course Building a Second Brain. I like to take some aspects for the planning of the future.
The four letters are explained in the following graphic:
I would like you to focus on the "Areas of Responsibility" because these are the categories which are important to you.
Examples include: Health; Finances, Professional Development; Travel; Hobbies; Friends; Apartment; Car; Productivity; Direct reports; Product Development; Writing
So, now that we have defined an "Area", write down all areas of your life to be able to focus on each one. If you had to rank them in terms of priority right now, what would they be?
Now, ask yourself: Do I currently live in alignment with my values and priorities in the top three areas of my life? If not, where am I most out of alignment? (e.g. you ranked your physical health highly while eating garbage and sitting all day)
If you like to rank things and put numbers behind your perception, feel free to assess the status quo of each as well as ranking them on a scale of 1 to 10.
Advancing in each category by setting goals
Your goals are the direction you move towards becoming someone you are not today. The best goals are well defined, not in the material possessions you get once you achieve them. but intentionally set to help you form the habits, thoughts, relationships, and lifestyle that turn you into the person you want to be. Setting conventional goals based on arbitrary gains just to hit them is satisfying, but not lasting.
Talking from experience, I achieved almost all my arbitrary goals before 30 at the end of last year and it was kind of depressing. Where do you go from here? What does it bring you if you have nobody to share it with? I can tell you: The same insecurities and fears follow you everyday but you miss the excitement looking into the future as you thought, hitting those goals would silence the voices in your head. Let me tell you: It doesn't.
Now, write down 1-3 goals for each of the defined areas of responsibility of yours. The natural question that comes up by productivity aficionados: "How should I write them down?" Personally, I am not a big fan of SMART goals. They distract you with superficial layers about what goals are really about: A direction to head towards in order to improve.
I know that a dear person has set herself the goal to go on vacation by herself for the first time. But who cares if it is once or twice? Germany, Europe or overseas? In Summer or Winter? For 2 days or a week?
So, let's help you to dive a bit deeper into your goals:
- What new habits or skills do you want to acquire? What habits do you want to break?
- What do you need to free yourself from? What do you need to get involved in more?
- To make sure these are your goals and not anyone else's, take some or all and ask "why" 3 or more times.
To give you a few ideas on categories and typically related questions you can raise (I took most of them from Anthony Gustin):
Physical health (mostly related to nutrition, exercise, sleep)
- What is the most important use of my body right now? Longevity? Looks? Athletic performance?
- What have I always admired about others' physical capacity?
- What activities do I enjoy the most that add to my physical health?
- What habits can I set up to help me to have the life I want?
Mental health
- What mindfulness practices do I do, or should I do?
- What makes me the most stressed?
- What relieves the most amount of stress?
- What goals can I set that make sure I am being the most expansive version of myself regularly?
Spirituality
- What is my current spiritual practice like?
- Do I have a routine that reminds me of my purpose in life, and something greater than myself?
- Do I have a community that helps reinforce my spirituality?
- What rituals can I chart with frequency that help me in my spiritual practice?
Creativity
- Where do I make new things with no outcome attached?
- Where do I get lost while making something?
- How can I create structure around creativity to make sure I do it when I don’t “feel” like it?
- How can I share my creativity with others?
- How can I use community to be creative?
Relationships
- Who should I reconnect with?
- Do I want to expand my social network? Contract it?
- Am I spending enough time with the people I care about?
- Who should I make more time for?
- Who is not supporting me that I should not try to please or make time for?
- Who are the people who are most like how I want to be and how to structure my life to spend more time with them?
Family
- How much do I want to see my family this year?
- How do I want to improve my family dynamics?
- How can I show up regularly as the brother/son/father that I want to be?
Travel
- Where have I always wanted to travel to?
- Where can I travel to enrich my life instead of escape from it?
- What are focused ways I can travel to help me become more of the person I want to be?
Fun
- What things do I do that I find myself losing time on?
- What do I do where I find myself laughing the most?
- What can I do that I think is silly and outrageous and has nothing to do with accomplishment?
Finances
- What does financial freedom look like to me and what can I get done in the next year to get closer to that?
- Where can I use money to make my life easier?
- Where am I spending money habitually that I don’t need to?
- What will it mean for me to have the net worth/income I think I want?
- How can I make money that helps me create the habits I want to turn me into the person I want to be?
Work
- What do I want out of my work? Impact? Income? Passive cash flow? Skill building? Purposeful work?
- How much do I want to work on this business/project/etc?
- If I could only work on one thing and income wasn’t a factor, what would it be and why?
- What are my unique skills and how can I give that gift to the world?
- What is a community that I want to belong to that can flourish with my gifts?