How one hour can change your life

What would you do if you had one hour each day to yourself?

As I was reading The 4% Fix by Karma Brown, she talked about how she changed her life by setting aside one hour in her morning to work on her goals and projects. She calls this the 4% fix, as one hour is 4% of your day. By setting aside one hour in the morning, she’s been able to reach and surpass her goal of publishing multiple books.

This is not a book summary or a review. This is simply a discussion of ideas that made the greatest impression on me when reading this book.

Photo by Who’s Denilo ? | Accessed on Unsplash.com

Main impacts

  1. Be intentional with your time.
  2. Mornings are important!
  3. Start small and be kind to yourself.

Be intentional with your time.

One of the most important messages in this book was to be very deliberate about how you spend this hour. Having an extra hour to work on anything is precious, and use it accordingly.

Pick a project or goal

Generally she suggests that you use this extra hour for a project or something special. Pick what you want this hour to work towards. If you have a dream goal or project, spend it on that.

You should have an overarching goal or project that you’re working on. Maybe it’s working on a skill, or exercising, or even just having quiet time to reflect.

Plan the details

Once you have a general guidance on what this hour is for, plan each morning and plan exactly what you want to do. That way you can wake up and get straight to it. This hour is precious, and you want to make the most of it. The best way is to show up prepared with a plan of what you want to accomplish.

If your overarching goal is to write a book, plan which days you are writing, editing, and planning. If your goal is to run a triathlon, plan which days you’re going to run, swim and bike; and then make sure your equipment is set out the night before. Make it easy to get started in the morning.

Part of spending this time intentionally is also to make sure you don’t get distracted by other things. Don’t spend your time with little tasks or with busy work. Don’t open your emails or be tempted to respond to people. Don’t open social media. Avoid all distractions, so that you can completely focus on your intended goal.

Mornings are important!

So I know a lot of people don’t consider themselves morning people (including myself!), but apparently mornings are one of the best times for this kind of deep work. There is a lot of science behind why mornings tend to be the best time to work on creative projects, so let me give you some examples. I don’t have links to the studies that back these up, you’ll have to read her book to get more details.

Reasons to take time in the morning

One key part of mornings is that you haven’t had to make many decisions yet, so your decision making ability hasn’t been exhausted. You’re also less fatigued and you have more self control. Your mind is not exhausted from all the little things that wear you down during the day. This makes it a good time to focus on work that requires both willpower and brain power; you tend to have the most in the morning. Honestly, this is the strongest argument I’ve heard for doing deep work in the morning, it makes sense that the hundreds of decisions we make each day wear us down by the end of the day.

Generally, people are more creative and active in the morning. Even if it’s not a creative endeavour you’re working on, using more creative thinking can benefit you in all areas. You can use creativity to find innovative solutions, or just to work on a creative project. Either way, mornings are apparently best. Personally, I think this is more dependent on the person, but I think it’s worth trying out all times of the day to see what works best for you (including in the morning).

Finally, it’s usually quiet in the morning and there are less distractions (even if you don’t have kids). You’re likely to have fewer distractions including from messages or people trying to contact you, people are less active on social media, and there are less expectations for you to be available. To be fair, I could see this also being the case late in the evenings.

Now, mornings might not be a best fit for everyone, but they tend to be a really good time deep work. Give mornings a chance! But ultimately, find what works best for you.

Start small and be kind to yourself.

In the book, she also gives practical guidance on how to incorporate this hour into your day, and what’s needed to make it sustainable.

She personally wakes up at 5am everyday, and suggests that you wake up an hour earlier than normal to fit this time into your day. However, waking up an hour earlier usually means that you also have to adjust your bedtime. It’s best to adjust your wake up and bed time together gradually. Start with getting up 5-10 min earlier (and going to bed 5-10 min earlier) and gradually move it up to where you want it to be. If you jump to one hour earlier, you may experience some jet lag-type symptoms, as your body is not ready for that drastic change. But a gradual transition is easier and more sustainable, as it gives your body time to get used to it.

Also, be kind to yourself! It’s okay to start small, and you’re not going to be perfect. Sometimes you won’t be able to wake up early, and that’s okay. It’s better to be kind to yourself and be persistent than judging yourself harshly and giving up. Most importantly, find what works for you. Everyone is unique and there is no one size fits all solution.

Final thoughts

I thought this book was quite practical and useful. It walks you through why it’s useful, how to make the most of it, and how to build the habit. I think there’s some pretty good advice in here. I don’t know if I’m going to start waking up at 5am everyday, but I do think I’m going to try using my mornings more deliberately.

What do you think about this practice?

What would you do if you had one hour to yourself each day?

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

References

  • You can find the book here.
  • You can see all books by Karma Brown on Goodreads here.
  • You can follow Karma Brown on Twitter here.

Tips for finding your purpose in life

Have you heard of the Japanese term Ikigai?

Ikigai is basically a Japanese word for your purpose in life or a happy life. “Iki” means to live and “gai” means reason, so the word literally means the reason to live. It’s a combination of what you’re passionate about, what you’re good at, how you can help the world, and what kind of job you can have. As I was reading the book The Little Book of Ikigai by Ken Mogi to understand more about about this concept, I learned a bit about how to do what makes you feel fulfilled.

Photo by Dil | Accessed on Unsplash.com

Main impacts

Here are the aspects of the book that resonated the most with me:

  1. Five pillars of Ikigai.
  2. Doing what you love without expecting recognition.
  3. The interaction of language and culture.

Five pillars of Ikigai

Ken Mogi starts off by introducing the five pillars of ikigai, and constantly refers to them throughout the book. The five pillars are a good way to get an initial idea of ikigai.

The Five Pillars:

  1. Starting small: This pillar focuses on just finding a way to start, that any small step is progress and it doesn’t need to be monumental. It can be doing something small towards your goal or finding ways to incorporate it into your life. This also included focusing on all the small details to improve performance or quality, such as perfecting every step of a process.
  2. Releasing yourself: The goal is to release yourself from judgement or from the goal of being successful. With this release, you give yourself permission to focus on your interest simply because you enjoy it, you’re not doing it to prove your worth or your success to others. When you change your motivation to be entirely internal rather than external, then you gain more joy from it and it becomes more sustainable (see other pillars).
  3. Harmony & sustainability: A key part of ikigai is to ensure that what you’re doing is both sustainable and long-lasting. Most of the other pillars support and enable sustainability, such as having internal motivation (releasing yourself), and enjoying the process (joy of little things). But make sure to consider how you can incorporate your ikigai into your life for the long-run and make it sustainable.
    • An incredible example of sustainability discussed in the book is the Ise Shrine. The shrine is dismantled and rebuilt every twenty years. This rebuilding process has been going on for the past 1,200 years! To ensure this is possible, there are many details that need to be planned ahead and considered, such as planting a specific tree far enough in advance that there will be enough of the exact size needed, and having access to individuals with special carpentry techniques that are past on from one generation to another. The sustainability is embedded directly into the processes and culture of the shrine.
  4. The joy of little things: The goal is to find joy in the process and all the details. If you’re able to enjoy what you do and all the stages of it, it will help keep you consistent and make the process more sustainable. The more sources of joy you have, the more likely you’ll continue to pursue an interest. It’s similar to the cliche of make sure you’re enjoying the journey, not just the destination.
  5. Being in the here and now: For this pillar, you need to focus on what’s happening in the present. Don’t get all caught up in the past or the future. This goes hand in hand with releasing yourself, so you’re not too preoccupied with becoming “successful” in the future, and the joy of the little things, so that you find joy in all the steps of improving your craft or career.

Example of the Pillars

As an easy way to show how all of these five pillars can interact, let me share with you an example that Ken Mogi shared for how they manifest in a sumo wrestler’s career. A sumo wrestler must start small by focusing on every little detail of each technique in their training to perfect the skill, such as where to place your feet. More amateur sumo wrestlers often have to attend to the needs of a more senior wrestler, which requires them to release themselves by focusing on another’s needs and desires. The overall harmony and sustainability of the sumo wrestling practice is upheld through the many rituals and traditions that maintain a consistent culture. There are many ways that wrestlers find joy in the little things, such as the taste of chanko (a dish unique to sumo wrestlers that helps them gain weight) or hearing the cheers of fans, and these enjoying each of these helps make their career more sustainable. During a match, a wrestler needs to be completely submersed in the present moment, aka being in the here and now, for their optimum performance.

Doing what you love without expecting recognition

This aspect is kind of a combination of pillars two and four, the releasing yourself and finding joy in little things. When you release yourself from judgement of others and are simply doing it because you love it, you also usually find joy in the little things. These two pillars together help you do what you love without expecting recognition. Most people who have become successful, have been consistently practicing the same skill simply because they enjoy doing it, and eventually they get so good other people start to take notice. Look at famous authors, artists, performers, and others, a lot of them became successful because they just kept practicing their skill at any opportunity they had.

Usually, when you do something because you genuinely love it, you want to continue doing it no matter what. You find pleasure in the details and you continually try to improve. The focus on improving yourself instead of who is taking notice, helps make the process more sustainable (pillar three) and enables you to continue perfecting your skill while finding joy in the process.

The key is to stop thinking about the judgement of others, don’t get caught up in what others think about you or how you compare to others. When you are only focused on what you’re doing, then you can truly embrace who you were meant to be, and do all the things that you want to do.

An Example

An incredible example of this is the world-famous sushi chef, Jiro Ono, who developed his sushi skills simply because he loved it. He did it without worrying about the expectations of others or what was the typical way of starting a sushi stand/restaurant. In this way, he developed multiple tools and processes unique to himself, which are now used across the world and are attributed to his ingenuity. Despite this incredible success and impact, he didn’t design any of those tools for others, but simply to make his craft better and help himself while continuing to learn.

The interaction of language and culture

A fascinating part of this book, was highlighting the strong connection between language and culture. One often reinforces and reflects the other, and you see it manifested and embodied in both.

Ikigai is a common word in Japanese, considered a part of everyday life, but it’s not always given that much thought. But its concept is seen throughout the country, in the way that people find joy and purpose in their work, and the efforts people go to perfect what they focus on without aiming for recognition. This language and practice have become so intricately intertwined, that it’s become a part of the Japanese culture. Interestingly, individualists (like Steve Jobs) are not usually fostered in this kind of system, but rather the type of people more commonly found are those with passion and mastery of their craft.

Another interesting example is the link between onomatopoeia and sound symbolism in the Japanese language and culture. In Japan, there’s a dictionary of onomatopoeia sounds that includes 4,500 examples of onomatopoeia expressions, as each sound has a distinct meaning. For example, ton ton vs don don, a simple change in one letter changes from a light tapping (ton ton) to a heavy, thudding one (don don). Japanese manga authors use these types of expressions extensively, with each one adding more nuance to the story. This type of sound symbolism is so embedded in the Japanese culture that they are also commonly used in professional contexts to highlight nuances.

Final Thoughts

This book was quite interesting, and I learned a lot about Japanese culture and life through the exploring the concept of ikigai. The book isn’t really an instructional guide on how to find or develop your ikigai, but it does act as a great introduction the concept. I feel like this book gives you the ground work to understand the concept and helps you start contemplating what your purpose in life is. You can use the pillars to assess your current or future interest, helping to shape them into something more sustainable.

There are many more examples of how ikigai can manifest in people lives in the book. If you’re interested in this topic, I would recommend reading the book to find out more.

I would love to know your thoughts on this concept, do you think you have an ikigai in your life and what is it?

References

  • You can buy the book on amazon here.
  • You can see Ken Mogi talking about the five pillars here.
  • If you’re interested in Ken Mogi, you can find links to his work and blog here: http://www.qualia-manifesto.com/
    • And his twitter is here.

How buying less can help you do more

Have you ever wondered how shopping impacts your life?

As I was reading The Year of Less by Cait Flanders, she discusses her experience of embarking on a year long shopping ban, where she doesn’t let herself buy anything except essentials and a few predetermined items. In this book, she talks about the revelations she had throughout the year, including how interconnected her life was to spending money and the huge impact that came from spending her money more intentionally. It really highlighted the impact consumerism has on our life, and how we can do so much more when we choose to buy less.

Photo by Harry Cunningham | Accessed on Unsplash.com

Main impacts

These are the ideas that resonated with me the most:

  1. The power of being intentional with your time, effort, and money
  2. Shopping as a habit and coping mechanism
  3. Interconnectedness of shopping with the rest of your life

See sections below for more details.

The power of being intentional with your time, effort, and money

I really liked how her goal of spending less made her so much more intentional with her time, effort, and money. I think the abruptness of the change, how she cut off all excess spending at once, made all the ways that she would typically spend money more obvious.

As she couldn’t go shopping to pass the time, she was more deliberate in how she spent her time, and would find other activities to do with her friends. She was also very intentional about removing any marketing or advertising that she could, such as unsubscribing from emails and store accounts on social media. Obviously you can’t get rid of all ads, but even just decreasing the exposure was a great way to spend less.

Another thing that made her more intentional was her list of what she could buy. She could buy a few predetermined items and she could replace something that broke or got damaged. This caused her to focus on buying when you need something, rather than based off of messages from sales and marketing. Also, she found that when you can only buy one version of a thing, such as one hoodie, you are more likely to spend more time to find the perfect one. This also ensures you find one that you will actually love and wear all the time, rather than grabbing something subpar that was available and/or on sale.

Being deliberate with what you buy, and only buying what you love and need, both limits the amount of things you have and need to take care of, but also makes sure you’re surrounded by things that you actually love, use, and want.

I found this really resonated with me because I love to go shopping, and absolutely love buying things on sale. Her discussion of being more intentional made me aware of how much I do buy things and helped my shift towards being a bit more intentional with what I buy. I do find that I am more conscious when I’m shopping (and how often I go shopping) and I’m trying to buy just what I need rather than whatever I like. But this will definitely be an ongoing process for me. It takes time to shift your mindset and habits.

Shopping as a habit/coping mechanism

As she stopped her spending so abruptly, she couldn’t help buy notice how often she would typically go shopping and how it had become a habit or coping mechanism for her. She even compared it to other addictions, as you can use it to numb or distract yourself (”treat yourself”, “you deserve it”, etc.) from a situation or after something bad has happened. This was quite powerful as she had previously overcome some strong addictions, so she could easily see the similarities.

At the beginning, she found that she would often crave shopping or buying something. Since she couldn’t give into the craving, it forced herself to question why that was her reaction. She found she was often trying to make herself feel better, though a bit of dopamine; numb or distract herself; or pretend that buying things could create a new life for herself, such as buying clothes for a new job or redecorating her house after a breakup.

I think a lot of us do the same thing. It’s this idea of retail therapy. Even though retail therapy is portrayed in movies as buying expensive shoes and clothes, it often manifests in different ways. We have a bad day and decide to go online shopping, or we feel like to be a specific person, we need to own certain things. And to make it worse, our society also reinforces and justifies our endless shopping by saying, “oh just treat yourself”, or “you’ve worked hard, you deserve it!”

Her shopping ban helped her understand why she had that reaction to a situation or why she felt it would help. It was often an instinctive habit or reaction, rather than an intentional use of money and time. It was only once she stopped it altogether that she was able to notice the extent of it.

If I’m 100% honest, I feel like I can see a lot of myself in her description. I sometimes go shopping to make myself feel better, and I sometimes buy things because I’m having a bad day. Since it resonated so strongly with me, I’m able to notice when I’m acting in the same way and can reduce how often I buy things as a reaction, and move towards being more intentional with my shopping. A key step in changing any habits is to first notice it and what sparks that reaction, so that you can change your reaction to that situation.

Interconnectedness of shopping to the rest of your life

Another thing she noticed was how many people cared about her shopping ban and how much it seemed to affect other people. She compared it to when she stopped drinking or eating meat. Everyone had something to say about it and it seemed to make everyone else defensive or feel like they had to justify their own choices. She was really surprised by the strong reactions and doesn’t understand why people seem to care so much about other people’s choices. She doesn’t care what you do with your money (or what you eat and drink), why does everyone else seem to care about her choices?

It also really affected the way she spent time with her friends and family. It was no longer enjoyable to go walk around the outlet malls or go window shopping together. She described it as being the only sober person at a party. But she found that people were happy to do different things, if you could suggest activities to do together (walks, etc.), and were usually quite happy to spend less money. Shopping has just become so habitual, that often it’s the first thing people think of doing together and can seem like a big deal to do something different.

There was, unsurprisingly, a huge impact on her finances. She was able to save so much more each month and spend more on what she wanted to do, like traveling. She also needed less so she spent less, which gave her a lot more freedom for how to live her life. Since her monthly spending went way down, she realized exactly how much money she needed, which was a lot less that her current income. This allowed her to save a lot at the beginning and also made leaving her full time job less intimidating because she knew exactly how much she needed each month. It also ensured her money wasn’t disappearing into black holes of things she didn’t need or use. Everything she owned she used or needed, and all her money was accounted for.

For me, this aspect of the book highlighted how consumeristic our society is, and how much of our society relies on these trained instincts to spend money. Marketing and advertising works, as it preys on these habits we’ve developed and our desires. I feel like I was already fairly critical and conscious of these influences, but I think what stood out for me in this book is how much society reinforces these messages through our interactions with each others.

Another thing that I’m more and more aware of is how easy it is to spend money. A common discussion around habit forming is to make the habits you want to develop as easy as possible (reduce friction) and make it difficult for you to spend time on the habits you want to break (increase friction). But with all of these online shopping or delivery platforms, they reduce all possible friction by saving your credit card info and address, so that you can buy an item with only a couple clicks. From a business perspective it makes so much sense, as they reduce friction people spend more money; but for us trying to spend less, it makes it more difficult to increase the amount of friction around shopping and be more intentional about what we buy.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed hearing about her experience of going through a year long shopping ban and all the lessons she learned through the experience. She helped highlight areas that are relevant to others and ways that you can incorporate her lessons learnt into your own life. If you’re interested in understanding more about her shopping ban journey and other lessons she learned, I would recommend reading her book! You can also check out more of her work in the links below.

Let me know if you would ever go on a shopping ban or if this has cause you to question any of your spending habits.

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

References

Understanding Why You Work

Ever feel lost when trying to decide what kind of career you want to have?

This simple activity is a great why to reframe your thoughts on work, by outlining your workview. It helps by identifying the why before starting to consider the kind of work you want to do. The workview concept comes from the book Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.

Photo by Annie Spratt | Accessed on Unsplash.com

Concept

A workview is a concept from the book Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. See my previous post here that provides an overview of the book.

The concept is simply to understand why you work.

This has nothing to do with the type of work you want or the job you want to have. Don’t worry about what kind of work, just focus on why you work.

The best way to start clarifying your workview is with a reflective exercise to better understand what your values are, specifically your work values. Work, as considered in this exercise, can be anything that you do during your days, either paid or unpaid.

It’s valuable to consider both the needs you currently have (rent, bills, etc.) and your idealized vision of work. Right now, some aspects of your life might be unchangeable, and work may very well be a way of covering basic needs. But it’s also important to understand what role you want work to have in your life, to outline what you are working towards.

Activity

To do the reflective exercise, take 30 min to an hour to focus on this. I recommend being very intentional about this time. Make sure there are no distractions. Put your phone on silent and in the other room. Grab some tea or coffee and come ready to be honest with yourself.

The activity is simple. All you need to do is write and reflect on what work means to you and why you work.

You can use the guiding questions below to form your reflection. There’s no need to answer each question directly, they are just to get you thinking and help guide your reflection.

As always, you can get more details in the book, Designing your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.

Guiding Questions

Key questions to ask yourself:

  1. Why do you work?
  2. What does work mean to you?
  3. What role does work have in your life?
  4. How does work relate to other aspects of your life (society/friends & family/money/etc.)?
  5. What is the purpose of work in your life?
  6. How will you feel satisfied by work? Do you need improve the world around your or help others?
  7. How important is it for your work to align with your personal values?

My Thoughts

I really enjoyed learning about this concept, because it completely changed my perspective.

The idea of working is assumed, there’s never a discussion about will you work or why you work, but simply jumping to focus on what kind of work will you do? Looking back it seems like we jump two steps ahead without laying a proper foundation.

Now, almost everyone will have to work in some way, either at a paying job, volunteering, or through domestic/care work. But if you already start with asking what kind of work, you’ve missed the opportunity to evaluate what role work has in your life.

Currently, I think there are more people thinking critically about work, especially after the pandemic, and I think it’s fantastic. I feel multiple things are contributing to this change, such as the job market has changed so much, working remotely is very much a possibility/reality for many, and now there are also so many alternative ways to make money with the internet.

I like the idea of taking a step back and identifying why you want to work, and what role you want work to have in your life. Sure, you may have to work to take care of your needs, but I think understanding why you work can lead to greater contentment. Especially if it provides hope that this is just temporary, while you work towards a better fit.

My Journey

For me, it’s helped reframe my understanding of why I work. It reminds me that my job is not my identity, and a job can simply be a means to an end until I get to a place with more purpose. Sometimes, a job is simply a means to make money and pay the bills, until you can find or build a better fit that encompasses your full understanding of a workview.

It’s given me a greater vision of the type of work I want to do, now that I better understand why I work and the role I want work to have in my life. Honestly, this reframe has been a big inspiration to start this blog.

Pair With: Lifeview

In the book, this activity is paired with a similar activity to outline your lifeview. Your lifeview is how you view the purpose and meaning of life (no biggie, right?). It’s there to help identify your values and what you think is important.

I understand this can feel daunting, especially as you may be trying to sort out smaller aspects, like a job or career direction. But it’s a critical aspect to consider, so that you can align your workview with your lifeview. For instance, if you think part of your purpose in life is to make the world a better place, then you’ll likely want to find a job that incorporates those values to feel fulfilled.

As this is a huge concept and frequently evolves throughout a lifetime, it’s an activity you can continue to return to and evaluate how to integrate it with your workview throughout your life.

Concluding Thoughts

The benefit of this exercise, is not simply that you do it once and you’re set for life, it’s rather that you can keep coming back to this activity at each stage in your life to evaluate why you work and what purpose it serves in your life. It’s a tool to assess the role of work in your life and what you want it to be in the future.

The most powerful part of this tool is the most simple reframe of changing the initial question from “what kind of work do you want to do?” to simply “why do you work?”. When you come back to ‘the why’ of anything in your life, you can then properly assess if it’s serving that purpose.

Have you done this exercise or read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.

Resources

How to design a life with purpose

Do you feel like unsatisfied with your current life, but unsure of how to change?

As I was reading the book Designing your Life by Bill Burnet and Dave Evans, I learned so many useful tips and tools to build a better life. Keep reading below for what stood out to me and some simple steps to start designing a life of purpose.

Photo by Kiki Siepel | Accessed on Unsplash.com

Key Takeaways

  • Passion is not the focus. Most people (80%) don’t have a singular passion, so the career process of “figuring out your passion first” is incredibly inapplicable.
  • It’s all about the process. Life is a process, designing is a process, and designing your life is a process. Enjoy it! Don’t just focus on the end goal, but make the most of each step.
  • Mindset changes are important, but so is action! Sometimes you need to change your perspective to properly address a problem or accept that it’s unlikely to change. But the most important thing you can do to start designing your life is to take action!
  • Prototype, prototype, prototype. This means to try and try and try again. Keep trying things until you find what fits you best. If you’re interested in a career, try aspects of it out or learn from someone in that area. While you’re trying things, be mindful of what grabs your attention and what energizes you.

My Journey

I find that whenever I feel stuck at a crossroads in my career and unsure of where to go next, I come back to this book (Designing your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans). I’ll be completely honest, I haven’t done all of the activities, which is probably why I keep getting stuck at crossroads.

But I keep coming back because I’m so impressed with the way the book is structured and activities outlined throughout.

This is not a passive read, it’s more of a tool that you need to apply and use. Just like designing your life requires action, so does getting the most out of this book. Almost every chapter ends with an activity for you to do that gets you closer to a better life. Each of the activities are clearly outlined, with both a description of why you’re doing it and successful examples of how this helped others.

The activities are such a great way to reflect on your current life, what direction you want to go in, and who you want to become. It’s not just focused on aspects of a job, or how to get a land a job; but genuinely building a life you enjoy. The activities can help you improve any area you want to focus on, or simply to find a better balance.

Five Steps

I would say you could summarize the process into five key steps:

  1. Assess yourself
  2. Find your energy
  3. Brainstorm ideas (and share!)
  4. Try it out
  5. Accept and continue the process

1. Assess yourself

Like all good planning, it starts with an assessment of where and who you are.

To understand where you are, you look at the current status of your life and what you want to change. I’ve seen lots of variations on this, styles like the 10 level life with the pretty circle diagrams.

Basically, you pick a handful of categories and decide if you’re excelling in this area or not, usually ranking it from 1 to 10. With 1 being an absolute mess and 10 being the best it could possibly be.

In this book, they stick to four categories: work, play, love, and health, which I really liked ‘cause it kept it simple and easy to approach. When there are too many categories, it can start to feel overwhelming. I would start with these four categories and if you really feel like something is missing, feel free to add an extra category without overcomplicating it.

This helps you to clearly see where you are thriving and what areas could be improved.

This assessment stage also aims to gain an understanding of who you are, including what’s important to you. It has you take time to sort out your core values, both for life and work, to help you align what you do with who you are. For more on this check out my post on your workview.

2. Find your energy

The next large step is still assessing yourself, but this is now focused on the types of activities you do. The objective of this stage is to pay attention to how you feel during the various activities you do, especially highlighting those activities that you love and hate.

Throughout your week, you’re encouraged to keep a log of your activities and how they make you feel. Do they energize you or do they drain your energy? Which activities excite you and which do you absolutely dread or bore you to tears? Do any of them get you into a state of flow?

Highlighting the types of activities you love and hate, will help give you a better idea of what you should be spending more (or less) time doing. This is key if you’re looking for a career change. It’s not about passion, it’s about what you do every day.

3. Brainstorm ideas (and share!)

Now that you have assessed your situation and better understand what you enjoy, you need to come up with lots of ideas!

This is the time for brainstorming, which is simply the act of putting as many ideas on paper as possible, without filtering or judging them, that will come later.

There are two activities you can do to brainstorm ideas:

  1. Odyssey lives: This is the idea that we all have multiple potential lives to live, and your job is to think of what would happen over the next 5 years for three different lives. The lives include:
    1. Business as usual: the current one you are in the middle of living – what would it look like if you keep on the same path?
    2. Forced career change: the next one is what if your current job is made obsolete and you had to change your career – what would you do?
    3. No limits: the last one is what would you do if money and people’s opinions were not an obstacle – if there were no limitations, what would you do?
  2. Mindmapping: You start with something you like, and just keep branching out and connecting words/phrases to each other. The further away from the center are the most exciting ideas. You want to do this quickly, maybe use about 10 minutes, then take three or so words from the outer edge and piece them together to create a potential job/situation.

These are simply activities to get ideas flowing, not to land on the perfect idea, rather to spark your creativity and think outside the box. Basically the crazier your ideas are, the more likely you’ll stumble upon ideas that will really resonate with you. The crazy ideas help breakdown any potentially unconscious barriers, and can be a way to reframe elements that inspire you.

4. Try it out

Now that you’ve got lots of ideas, you need to start filtering them down and trying them out!

Filtering down can be frightening, but it’s necessary to start with focusing on trying just a few ideas. You can always come back to your list and try something if nothing fits.

Also, don’t hesitate to cross items off your list, you’ll know exactly how you feel once you’ve made the decision. When you flip a coin to make a decision, once it’s in the air, you know the decision you want.

To try out your ideas, you need to prototype and find ways to experience them before fully committing to a new life path. The whole focus of this stage is to learn what that kind of life would be like by talking to people currently living it, trying some small freelance jobs with similar roles (i.e., try catering before opening a restaurant), volunteering in a related area, or learning more about the type of skills you need to have. Remember to focus on the type of daily activities you would have in this new role and find ways to experience them.

One quote I loved from the book is “The future is already here, it’s just unequally distributed.” Meaning there are already people living your ideal life. Find someone living the kind of life you want, and see if it’s really all you have imagined or desired.

As you try out your ideas, you’ll keep refining them until you find the best fit. Often times, you’ll start in one direction and gradually narrow down your direction to a singular path. As a key part of the process is interacting with others, you’ll often make useful connections along your way.

5. Accept and continue the process

Finally, comes one of the most difficult parts, accepting the decision you’ve made. Once you’ve gone through this process (it can take a while), you’ll need to accept where you are and stop thinking “what if”?

Now, this doesn’t mean you should stay in a bad situation. Rather to simply live and fully experience life without regrets. At some point you’ll need to fully consider the life you’ve built and stop looking for new things to try. Fully accepting where you are allows you to examine what is working and what’s not.

Now, we must understand this is an ongoing process, and you can continue to refine any area of your life with the same steps. Life is about growing and thriving, but also accepting what life gives you. Remember, this is simply a tool or framework for how you can design your best life.

Concluding Thoughts

I keep coming back to this book because it’s such a useful tool to use.

It outlines clear activities, while giving you a fresh perspective on approaching big changes and the language to assess each option. It’s always relevant as the reflections and activities can be tailored to any situation, are useful on so many different levels, and your thoughts can change every time you go through the process.

Even if you don’t do all the activities, you will still gain new ways to look at your life and critically assess how you feel.

There is so much more information available in the book, with clear examples and encouragement throughout. I would highly recommend reading this book if you are looking to change any aspect of your life.

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

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