Notes from the Mountain

This week's conversation between Anna and Jores was a little different.

They were recording from the car on their way to Michigan rather than from their usual setup. Somewhere between talking about the trip and Jores revealing just how many careers one person can apparently fit into a lifetime, they started talking about designing your life.

I have always liked the idea of designing your life. It sounds intentional. It suggests that instead of simply accepting whatever happens, we have some say in where we're going.

But the more I listened, the more I wondered whether the phrase creates the wrong picture.

Designing a life isn't like designing a house. You don't create the blueprint, choose every detail, order the materials, and then build exactly what you drew.

Life has an irritating habit of participating in the process.

Opportunities appear that you couldn't have planned for. Priorities change. You change. Something you were certain you wanted five years ago might no longer make sense today.

Perhaps designing your life isn't about figuring out the whole thing.

Perhaps it's about deciding what you want this chapter to be about.

You Don't Need a Plan for the Rest of Your Life

Anna talked about thinking in roughly three-year chapters. I liked that idea.

Ten years is difficult to imagine. Even five can feel strangely abstract. We don't know what opportunities will appear, what will change around us, or who we'll become along the way.

Three years feels different. It’s long enough to do something meaningful, but close enough to imagine. It could be the chapter when you build your business, establish yourself in a new career, or start a family. Perhaps work is already going well and this chapter is about your health. Maybe it's about a relationship, personal development, or finally giving serious attention to something you've wanted to learn for years.

The point isn't that everything else stops mattering. Anna and Jores talked about periods in their own lives when one area naturally required more attention. When their children were newborns, for example, balance wasn't exactly the defining feature of the experience. That chapter had its own priorities.

There is something freeing about looking at life that way. You don't have to decide what the rest of your life should look like. You only need to ask what matters now.

You Also Don't Need to Design It the Same Way as Everyone Else

One of my favourite things about this conversation was how differently Anna and Jores approach the same idea.

Anna likes structure. She likes having the vision, turning it into goals, and breaking those goals down into something she can work toward.

Jores is considerably less interested in all that organization.

Apparently, spreadsheets aren't required for a meaningful life. I have made a note.

His approach has been much more instinctive. He told the story of working at a tool company around 1989 or 1990. He was doing well, but one day he walked outside, looked at the sky, and realized, I don't belong here.

So he left.

He didn't have the next thirty years mapped out. He simply knew that the life he was living wasn't the one he wanted, and he took the next step. Within a few years, his career had changed completely.

Anna's own story was different. She never planned to live in North America. An opportunity brought her to Canada for work. She liked it, discovered an MBA program that would allow her to continue working while studying, and decided to take the chance.

Neither story followed a predetermined blueprint but both involved direction. That distinction feels important because you can have a vision without knowing exactly how you'll get there.

Leave Some Room for Life to Surprise You

This may have been the part of the conversation I liked the most. Anna and Jores agreed that there is a danger in becoming too attached to the plan. If you decide exactly how your future is supposed to unfold, an unexpected turn can start to look like failure. But what if it isn't?

Jores has changed careers several times. Anna moved to a continent she never expected to live on. Neither could have designed every step beforehand.

Sometimes the unexpected route leads somewhere better than the destination you originally imagined. That doesn't make planning pointless. It means the plan needs some breathing room.

Know what you want from this chapter. Move toward it. Pay attention to the opportunities that appear along the way. And be willing to reconsider the route when life shows you something you couldn't see from the starting point.

I suppose even I can admit that staring at a map isn't the same thing as walking the trail.

The Goal Isn't Really the Goal

There was another part of the conversation that took the idea a little deeper. Anna used the example of wanting to earn a million dollars. If you couldn't spend the money, couldn't invest it, couldn't give it away, and couldn't use it for anything at all, would earning it still matter? Probably not. The number matters because of what we believe it will allow us to experience, create, change, or become.

The same question applies to almost any goal.

• Why do you want to lose the weight?
• Why do you want the promotion?
• Why do you want to build the business?
• Why do you want to run the race?

Behind the visible goal is usually a picture of life.

Perhaps you want more freedom. Perhaps you want to feel strong again. Perhaps you want work that challenges you. Perhaps you want more time with your family. Perhaps you simply want to find out what you're capable of.

That is where designing your next chapter becomes more interesting than setting another goal.

Instead of asking only, What do I want to achieve?, you can ask:

• What kind of life do I want to be living?
• Who do I want to become during this chapter?
• What would make me genuinely proud of the next three years?

The goals come from answering these questions first.

Direction Matters More Than Detail

By the end of the conversation, Anna and Jores had arrived at essentially the same place despite taking very different routes to get there.

You need direction.

Anna may turn that direction into a three-year vision, goals, projects, and next actions.

Jores may look at something and decide, That's where I'm going.

Either can work.

What doesn't work particularly well is falling asleep at the wheel and assuming life will somehow take you exactly where you wanted to go. That was one of the stronger points they made toward the end of the episode: even if detailed planning isn't for you, some awareness of where you want your life to go still matters.

You don't need to know what you'll want twenty years from now. You don't need every milestone mapped out. You don't even need to know exactly how you'll reach the thing you want next. But perhaps you should know what direction you're facing.

What Is This Chapter About?

That's the question I've been carrying around since the conversation ended.

Not What should I accomplish with my life?

That's enormous.

Not Where will I be in ten years?

I have no idea. Neither do you. Let's stop pretending.

Just this:

What is this chapter about?

If you looked three years ahead and this chapter had gone extraordinarily well, what would be different?

What would you have done?

What would you have experienced?

Who would you have become?

Maybe you already know. Maybe you haven't thought about it in years. Either way, it seems worth pausing long enough to ask and answer. Then take the first step. You can work out the rest as you go.

Continue the Conversation

This particular conversation started with the idea that productivity, goals, habits, and all the other things Anna and Jores talk about aren't really the point. They're just tools. The point is what we use them to build a life we actually want to live.

That's also why they created the Focus & Fulfillment Facebook group. It's a place to talk with other people who are thinking seriously about their goals, their growth, and what they want their own next chapter to look like. It's also where Anna and Jores usually record More Than Just Task Management live.

So, I'll leave you with the question from this week's conversation:

What do you want the next chapter of your life to be about?

Come tell us in the Focus & Fulfillment Facebook group.

I suspect there are a few other people there figuring out their next chapter too. 🐐

Author

Anna Angelova