Happy Sunday Friends!

Here is 1 quote I’m musing, 2 Ideas, 3 of my favorite things from the week, and 1 question. If you find it useful or interesting, please feel free to forward this along to some friends or others!

One Quote I’m Musing

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”

-Epictetus

The most asked question I’ve gotten in the last two years behind “how’s it going?” is, by far, something in the shape or form of “So what are you doing next?”

It’s a great question, it’s also a loaded question and an intimidating one. Many of us feel a bit lost in life at specific times and for varying periods and just as many reasons.

We may not know what we want to do next, what we want to do now, or at all!

Maybe we’re feeling directionless, or maybe we have too many directions we’re being pulled in simultaneously and don’t know where we’re going.

I feel like this quite often as I move between (and during) jobs. I’ve actually been thinking about what’s next for a few years now, and just as I feel like I know it solidly, I realize how much I don’t know.

Below is an attempt at helping the “where I’m going/what’s next” question.

What (Really) is Wayfinding?

Wayfinding is an interesting term. It encompasses all the ways that beings orient themselves and then navigate. From ships on the sea (originally without sextants and technology) to the spiritual concept of going to the edges of what we know, then going further, ever further.

In my context for life plans (and I’m borrowing heavily from Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evan) it’s the process of figuring out where you want to go even when you don’t have a clear destination in mind.

Think about early sea explorers. They didn’t know exactly where the “new worlds” were. But they knew that they should go in a roughly “that” direction. Allowing time for themselves to make small decisions, micro adjustments along the way to get them there.

I guess we could break this down into three parts.

Develop an idea of where you want to go
Understand where you are (honestly)
Come up with a plan (outline) on how you want to begin to get there

To keep this not huge, we’ll tackle the first one today, then the next two over the next two weeks. So, we have a week to muse, ponder, chat, deliberate, change our minds, and decide on one of the most difficult questions we will ever answer. And then another week for the same thing.

Let’s dive in, and it’ll help, I promise.

Develop an idea of where you want to go

I want to do this in a specific way. Quickly read each exercise, write down the first one or two things that pop in your head (5 seconds, tops). Don’t Think About It!

Then actually do the last exercise “Start at the End”. Really think about it. Then go back and do the exercises for real. The concept is to get a thin slice of what to think about before you think, have enough context for a big think, then go back and really think.

Do you trust me? It’s ok if you don’t; spend all the time you want, you do you. But please cycle back to the start after the last one.

First Exercise: What service will you provide?

Imagine you’re at a speaking event. TED, Google Talks, Ideacity, etc. There’s a speaker that’s profound, moving, and inspiring to the audience.

Now think about that speaker being the future you. You are talking about this service, this thing that you’ve figured out over your lifetime and you’re bringing it to everyone else.

What are you talking about? Why is it inspiring?

Reminder, this doesn’t have to be earth-shattering. It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. Take a look at all the great talks out there and see that many of them are awesome things about how to be a great spouse, parent, learner, teacher. How to think about love, life, work, manage time, and many more.

Regardless of what the subject, these people have devoted themselves to something, become experts, and are now giving everyone a short-cut to speed them along like paths.

Understanding this, having the broad concept gives us that guiding light in the cosmos, the constellation above the seas by which we can wayfind. Figure out the direction we want to travel in life.

Second Exercise: Reduce the fear

You’ve heard this one from me before, dear dedicated reader. What would you do if you knew there was no way for you to fail? What would you build, learn, do? What impact would you like what you’d do have?

A new inverse to this: What would you consider doing even if you knew you would fail? Think of it in terms of what undertaking, even knowing it might not be a commercial success, would have a journey worth having?

The idea here is to touch that deeply internal dreamer inside ourselves that holds onto many of the things we value, but “protect” from external view.

Third Exercise: The Ideal life

This is one of my favorites. I’ve also talked about this one before. What does your ideal life look like? Map out an ideal week, an ideal day. What are you doing? Who are you doing it with? What about this makes it perfect for you?

This is one that WILL change over time and that’s ok, it’s good even. My ideal week when I was in my twenties and Solana and I were dual income, no kids was very different than today. The idea is to take a snapshot of what we value right now for ourselves.

Fourth Exercise: Modeling Average

“Show me who you spend time with”, the expression goes, “and I’ll show you who you are.”

Picture yourself as the embodiment of 3-5 people you admire most (past or present). Who are they? What qualities are you pulling from them? WHY do you admire them and why would you emulate those qualities?

Last Exercise: Start at The End

You’ve achieved everything you wanted to in life at this point. What do you want your obituary to look like? What sorts of thing do you want people to be saying about you in your relationships, work, and your achievements?

This isn’t supposed to be morbid, or a scare tactic. Again, this is to help us Wayfind. To better visualize where we (loosely) want to head, general “that away” direction. At the very least, it will help us know where we don’t want to head.

Got it? Great! Now do it the second time!

Done it the second time? You are an all-star! Set a date six months or a year from now on your calendar to come back to this and do it again. See how things have worked out, or not worked out!

Remember, this is version 1. Nothing is set just because you answered a certain question a certain way today. The point is to help us find a general direction with micro-decisions to get us either on a path, or away from a path we don’t want to go.

What I’d really love for you to do is to shoot me a line and let me know how this went. What questions did it spur? What did you like? What did you abhor? Why do I have so many questions?

-e

Two Ideas From Me

Enjoy youth. When we are young, we have the time to absorb mistakes, failures and the like. As we get older, our decisions take on a greater weight because we have, likely, built something; now we have something to lose.
Early Career is about saying Yes. It’s about getting access to as many games as possible. Mid-Career is a point where you have more options than time to pursue them. Mid-Career is about selecting which games you want to keep, and which ones you need to let go. It becomes, as Derek Sivers says, “Hell yes, or No Thank You.” with little room for sort-of interesting, maybe fun, kind of hot, or potentially cool.

Three Favorite Things From Others

“Intelligence is the ability to learn from your mistakes, Wisdom is the ability to learn from the mistakes of others.” | Author Unknown - Likely derived from Otto Von Bismark
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” | John Lennon
Removing Passive Barriers | Ramit Sethi | More - One of my favorite vignettes Ramit has in here is where a friend of his lost $3000 because he didn’t get around to cashing a check from his previous job before they went out of business. When he asked him why, he said “I didn’t have an envelope”. It’s such a small thing, and yet it cost him some significant money.

One Question

What options or opportunities are you keeping open that aren’t a Hell Yes and why are you keeping them open?

Have a wonderful week,

I’ll see you Sunday.
-e