Creating the Life I Want
30: an HBR article about strategizing your life has inspired my newfound tradition to yearly evaluate where I am in my life and where I want to go
In this essay, I will… share my experience and attempt to summarize the steps outlined in the article I read. Warning: Pretty dang informative.
Planning is kinda my forte. I love to be ahead of the game and be in charge of the direction of plans. I know life doesn’t always follow the plan, but I believe thinking about where you want to end up leads you down roads that take you there. Even when life shakes you up, having a clear direction can help you get your bearings and keep moving.
So, you can imagine my excitement when my friend Helen showed me this Harvard Business Review article entitled “Use Strategic Thinking to Create the Life You Want.” I HIGHLY encourage you to read the article in full as I am admittedly bad at summarizing, but, today, I will attempt to do just that and to share what I’ve found out about myself. And, of course, I didn’t go on this journey alone. Zach and I used our anniversary trip to begin our time strategizing our lives together, and I would recommend completing this exercise with someone or sharing it with a group to help you reach the goals you wish to accomplish.
Using Business Strategy on Your Life
As a self-proclaimed dreamer, I feel I sometimes lack the ability to logically plan out the steps needed to reach my goals. Even more often than that, I can recognize the steps, but feel completely overwhelmed by the overestimated size of each. I felt relieved hearing the author of this article describe building a life strategy as “giving your emotion and intuition an analytical partner.” What a beautiful balance between these parts of myself!
When you take questions usually asked in creating a business strategy and reframe them as personal, we end up with 7 Big Questions:
How do I define a great life?
What is my life purpose?
What is my life vision?
How do I assess my life portfolio?
What can I learn from benchmarks?
What portfolio choices can I make?
How can I ensure a successful, sustained life change?
As Martha, a 26-year-old graduate student, explained, “Life keeps taking shape… When all the Christmas parties and weddings and trips are suddenly over, you ask yourself, ‘Have I really lived or has life just happened to me?’”
I think it’s important to have the correct mindset in creating a strategy— to know that writing out goals and having aspirations is not to “strictly follow it and forbid life to unfold,” but to keep us proactive and generally headed in the direction we ourselves want to go. It felt so productive to go through these steps, actualizing the life I want to live just by saying aloud and writing down what I had never had the space to express previously.
What story do I want my son or my friends or people who knew me to tell about me someday?
“What should I have experienced so that in the end I can say to myself, ‘I have lived’?”
“The story comes alive when we look inside.”
With a recommendation to take notes and an incredible motivation to get started, I got to it. I am actually still writing it out on the single page below.
1. How do I define a great life?
We completed this first step at a coffee shop in Prescott called The County Seat. It was seriously the vibiest place and it made me want to live in this small town so I could become an avid coffee-goer at this place. Prescott is full of little wonders. But anyways, Zach and I sat (with his big cup of hot fancy coffee and my tiny, plastic cup of water that ended up having a small hole and creating a small puddle that my notes for this conversation almost got drenched in) at this cute little table surrounded by plants, looking outside the giant windows at the snow-covered mountains, while natural light pour in on us, like little flowers at the windowsill. Step 1 asked us to define “a great life” in our own words. Were we running after pleasure, virtue, connection..? We pondered this as we tried to fill out PERMA-V, a suggested acronym that stood for great life dimensions and all that a good life could be for you. All of this is customizable to apply to each person individually, so we decided to take out the E (engagement) and add a new letter S for spirituality, which resulted in:
Positive Emotions (frequent feelings of pleasure and contentment)
Relationships (mutual feelings of caring, support, and love)
Meaning (contributing to making the world a better place)
Achievement (striving for success or mastery, reaching goals)
Vitality (being healthy and energetic)
Spirituality (studying the bible, becoming strong in our faith)
After we created our own personal definitions of PRMAVS, we rated each category by importance and current satisfaction. Zach and I shared many of our happiest memories with each other, explaining aloud what has affected us the most and dissecting the happiness, to truly understand what made that memory joyful and filling for us. This lead to so many cozy and safe conversations between Zach and I. Everything felt so special, all of the content of our conversation and the feeling of sharing this with someone I trust and love so deeply. I held his hand as I asked him each question, looked him in the eyes, and felt his words hit me like a hug… I am filled up by real conversation.
2. What is my life purpose?
At this point, Zach thought we were maybe halfway there, but I broke the news that, no, we were not. We were on step 2/7, and already 2 hours in. It probably felt like a long amount of time to give to this internet exercise his wife’s friend had sent him. But Zach is not a Ken; he understood and— not liked but— LOVED the Barbie movie. He respects me (and my friends) and what I find important, so we marched on. Besides, he still had coffee left.
We dove into step 2, which involved outlining our purpose. Where am I headed? Where is my target? And to help nail that down, I need to ask myself what I’m good at, what my core values are, what lights me up, and what I can give back to the world. With sample lists and my best friend by my side, it was super fun and really feeding my Words of Affirmation need for him to tell me what I’m good at.
This step also calls for you to ask your friends and family for input, as your purpose seems to be more obvious to your people than it is to you. This was possibly my favorite step out of all of them, as we got to draft a purpose statement for our own lives. Never before has my purpose felt so clear. We drafted them ourselves and then read them to each other. My eyes filled with tears hearing our statements out loud; it felt like a verbal painting of us.
3. What is my life vision?
After completing step 2 with a total of 4 hours of time spent so far, we decided to take a break before step 3, which we visited over the course of our next 2 sit-down meals (including apple crepes lovingly covered with some of the best whipped cream I’ve ever tasted). Zach and I had to rephrase these questions to each other a few times before either of us could really get in the mindset to answer. We had to ask each other what story we wanted people to tell about us 5-10 years from now. What a question! What do I want to have been known for? What do I want to have done? What does 80-year-old Gabby want to be able to say she did? What would make 80-year-old Zach super cool to current Zach?
This step also included creating vision boards, which would need to be a fun activity for another day when we were closer to my huge collection of art supplies. I am a huge fan of collaging, which I’ve shown here before, so the idea of creating a vision board annually sounds like a wonderful tradition! It’s really fun for me to cut out clips from magazines or print specific photos out and tape them together into the look and feel of my ideal future. I’m all about that aesthetic.
As the Stoic philosopher Seneca said, “If you do not know which port you are sailing to, no wind is favorable.”
Even without visually gathering images, we talked a long while about things we would love to do, to accomplish, to try… Things we would have never shared because they felt too big to fit into our reality. Saying them aloud to each other had us realizing just how reachable these ambitions actually were. I think both of us learned things about each other we may have never known otherwise. And for that, I am forever grateful to this step.
4. How do I assess my life portfolio?
This was the first step that seemed a little complicated to me, probably due to its mathy nature. Thankfully Zach was excited, so we completed this step on our next date night. In this step, we needed to analyze how we really spent out 168-hour week and rearrange items if the priorities were not where they needed to be. It was easy to look at the past year and see where most of our time went, but trying to reallocate our time to better prioritize was difficult.
We also needed to divide the total time of a certain activity in half if there was an overlap of SLUs. For instance, time with my parents and time with my son were in the same SLU category, but going on a walk with my son fed two categories: physical health/sports and family; so, I divided the time between both. We rated all SLUs’ importance. what our current satisfaction was in each, and then plotted those on a 2x2 graph to visually see where we were with our lives and how we spent our time. (See why it was overwhelming for me to start?)
In the 2x2 representing our life portfolio, it was easy to see where Zach and I differed in priorities, but—thankfully and expectedly— our priorities aligned in many ways. Our SLU scores were very similar as well. Each SLU was plotted on the 2x2 with importance and satisfaction as the x- and y-axis. Starting with the top left and moving clockwise, we now had 4 categories:
High importance, Low satisfaction‼️: This category contained SLUs that were very important to me, but I had sadly been neglecting. I needed to focus on them more to get the most out of them.
High importance, High satisfaction❗️: This category shows me statistically how I define a great life. When reallocating time, I must keep in mind that I need to keep devoting significant time to these activities.
Low importance, Low satisfaction 🚫: This category shows me what I should not be spending time doing. This area is for activities undeserving of my time.
Low importance, High satisfaction 🚫: This last category shows me what I may be enjoying a lot, but do not put me on the right track needed to support and achieve my vision. I need to spend little to no time on activities in this category.
We made the “High Importance and Low Satisfaction” category our main priority, but also made an effort to look at the difference in our ratings and how we could help each other make up the difference and gain more satisfaction in areas important to both of us.
5. What can I learn from benchmarks?
As another reflective step, Zach and I needed to recover from the brain power required for the last step and primarily use our own thoughts and opinions again. We needed to reflect on those we admired personally and professionally and dissect why we felt that way. What made them so admirable in our eyes? We had to think of this successful and admirable person and think about what they would do or the choices they would make if they were in our shoes.
I think the purpose of this step is just to step out of our regular routines and ways of thinking to be able to see if the change we are desiring are as difficult to capture as we’ve told ourselves they are. Zach and I mentioned different role models and had different goals, but realizing them together and sharing this journey was already giving us great perspective and giving us built-in accountability.
6. What portfolio choices can I make?
This step was where all our data came together. At this point, we had worked on it in Prescott, at restaurants, at home when our son finally went to sleep… We had put in a good 8-10 hours at this point. We were ready to wrap things up and do these last steps in one night. We needed to go over all results from each step and create goals to change what we needed to. If I continued my life as I have been, would I reach my goal? Would my life reflect the vibes and the successes of my vision board?
We decided on a couple goals reflecting each high importance and low satisfaction SLU that we charted. Rereading the article again to write this, I realize we needed to pull information from more than just the one category in the 2x2, but we did choose around 6 total goals for us to move toward. With such little time in a week, we needed to bundle as many activities as possible with existing important activities. (At this point in the article, the author also makes it clear that rest is still important and I will add that, technically, sleep and rest fall into a very necessary SLU, so there ya go!)
“Researchers found that people are happiest when they have two to five hours of free time each day.”
It sure does feel inspiring to talk about being an integral start of a ripple effect created by a small change I made, but creating new habits is not easy. One of my goals is to go to the gym to swim laps once a weekday. This change would require me to purchase a monthly membership to a gym close to my work to be able to walk to work after I completed my daily goal. All was well on Day 1, but this immediately backfired on me this week when I fell ill along with my son. The article let me know that “Doing just 15 minutes of physical activity a day increases life expectancy by three years (despite amounting to only about half a year of time investment),” but it doesn’t physically take me out of bed earlier. It doesn’t help me recover after my workout after years without lap-swimming. And it sure as heck isn’t sending checks to cover the cost of my new membership. These goals were easy to create and dates to check in were easy to schedule, but it’s less easy to stick to a change.
7. How can I ensure a successful, sustained life change?
These last two steps (6 & 7) are ongoing for Zach and I as we are trying to set goals that connect to our life purpose and will also be able to be supported by a plan. In these upcoming weeks, we need to further flesh out our OKRs (objectives and key results) to be able to add dates to check in. We have already given each goal an accountability partner (though have not contacted all of them yet…), as well as implemented a “points” system to help reward our behavior. Just like in my classroom, there are no random punishments, but there will be the lack of reward if we fail to commit to the change, the internal shame we both tend to spiral into, and the added motivation to give good news to the friend we designated as that goal’s anchor. There is also the natural consequence of not reaching our goals or getting the life we want, so that’s motivating in and of itself for me.
We have not set aside a weekly meeting to review and update, but after this crazy week, I think it appropriate to do so. The article suggests a quick 15-minute meeting will do the trick and (much like the Road Work Ahead vine) I sure hope it does!
In Conclusion
This takes some time and some real effort and lots of deep talks, but it felt so necessary and productive, as well as emotionally fulfilling. It’s not every day that I feel like both sides of my brain are fully used in an activity, but here I am, feeling very creative and productive all at once.
It may seem like a lot, but the reasons not to do it don’t exist unless you are literally on your deathbed. I recommend this to everyone out there living a life as it is never too late to change if you’re willing to put in the work. Even putting the work into completing these steps felt fulfilling because I have begun to understand that what I want to do and dream of doing is achievable, possible, and realistic. It made all my artsy wishes into practical goals and that made me feel like all parts of me were real and honest and worth it.
And to those weary of planning that like to let life take them where it may, maybe use this to direct your thoughts, pray to God, or to throw it into the Universe or whatever you believe in. Use this life strategizing idea, not as fences to coral you, but as a compass to guide you in the general direction of nice weather, good friends, and even greater memories. I hope you read the article and try it out yourself. Here’s to you and your North Star!
“There’s more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line.”
🌻ART SHOW & TELL🌻
A Poem from January 22 🍁
Oh
I am thankful for you,
My imaginary friend turned real.
Your laugh helps me feel good,
Your support deems me un-villainous,
As I once was told
And once believed I was.
Though revenge never wrote its way
into my hands and out of my nightmares,
It manifested into rocks I trip over.
When I’m walking with you,
Arm in arm, and I’m laughing,
I trip sometimes but it’s funny,
I’m smiling because I like being around you,
And I’m happy.
And it’s because
I’m an imaginary friend turned real.
You perceived me,
and I became.
Like color soaking into a page,
You helped bring me to life.
I was beginning to think
Perhaps I wasn’t made for this,
But I am this. Thank you.
Time for some TLCCC💕
Treating myself to: a Lifetime gym membership, feeling so fancy (thx job benefits for an amaze discount)
Listening to: (finally) the Jonas Brothers’ latest album… as a longtime fan, I now find myself fading out of the fandom. I am honestly kinda disappointed. 😔
Crafting: My RenFest outfit! Pinterest is my friend.
Craving: cheeseeeeeeeeee
Caring SO much about: making sure I spend time with my son. We were both home sick this week which was tough, but he napped on me for 2.5 hours and I felt so at peace. We’ve had a busy start of the year and evaded sickness for as long as we could. Not even my intense, constant handwashing could save us.