Today I’m in a good mood. I’m doing a very pleasant exercise: writing down the things I want to do and don’t want to do this year. This is not a list of projects or a down-to-earth task list. Not at all. It’s more about who I want to be than what I’m going to do.
These are mainly my own ideas (maybe unconsciously stolen from some personal productivity technique, I don’t know), and they’re meant to be done for fun. Just to take some time for reflection. To discover the things that matter to you.
Disclaimer: if you follow some kind of advanced life-planning methodology, this is probably not for you. It’s for people like me, who are only taking their first steps in taking their life into their own hands.
Here’s the formula I use to describe my ideas about the life I want next year:
Values → Vision → Goals + Skills + People + Ideas
Now I’m going to explain the ingredients and show you some examples from my lists.
The Values item is self-explanatory, I guess. This is a list of five things I believe I value now. They are:
I composed a similar list a year ago and was very surprised by how little has changed. I’ve made a few corrections, restricted the list to five items and clarified them in my head. This is meant to guide your everyday decisions, but I don’t feel much effect yet. I don’t take it too seriously, though; it’s fun to check it a year later.
The Vision part consists of a few lists that describe the imagined perfect life in more detail. Perfect daily routine, Habits and Boundaries are among them. These aren’t a strict set of rules either, but rather ideas that help draw a picture.
It hasn’t changed much since last year.
Quiet morning:
Productive and peaceful daytime:
Relaxed evening:
Working with habits is an essential part of personal development. If you want to see changes in your life, you should change your habits first. I won’t go into detail here, as habits are a vast field to reflect on. Unfortunately, I can’t say I’ve been consistent in working on my habits. I have a Trello board that helps me visually track progress, or the absence of it. I hope to improve this year. I’d recommend trying the Coach.me app (previously called Lift.do), reading Zen Habits by Leo Babauta or, better still, joining his Sea Change Program.
The other Vision lists are not as precise as the habits list. They include:
These lists give me a place to store ideas like “I won’t raise my voice” or “I will eat mostly plants and avoid meat when possible”. The Boundaries list is connected to habits. For example, it includes “Max 15 min of social media surfing a day”.
By the way, the RescueTime app does a great job of fully automatic time tracking. Basically, it knows how much time you spend on various sites and sorts them into productive and not.
Goals. The Goals list is part of my GTD system in Podio. There’s a lot written about goal setting out there, so I’m not going to expand on this. Frankly, I have never yet set a clear (or rather SMART) goal for a whole year. This will be the first time. Time will tell how it turns out.
Skills. A list of skills I want to develop or improve. It includes writing in English, meditation, SEO and business process management.
People. People I want to connect with. People who inspire me. I’m nurturing an idea to set up some kind of system that reminds me to check what’s going on with people I’m interested in, send them a random “how are you?” ping, maybe offer my help.
Ideas. Things I’d like to do or want to consider this year. This may be posting a picture of the day to Instagram or keeping a daily journal.
This “formula” is not a remedy that’s good for everyone. You can easily add lists like “Places I want to visit” or “Things I want to buy”. Change it the way you like. But I’d recommend leaving Values, Goals and Habits untouched, as they are the most powerful. Just the fact that you took a few quiet minutes to reflect and wrote down some ideas for your future is wonderful. I hope it will help you change your life.