Life Planning

We often think we know the direction we want to take in life, and keep that vision of the future in our mind. That may work some of the time, however, writing your life plans in words has shown to be a more effective approach in helping us to achieve our goals, as it encodes the message into our long-term memory. When kept in our mind alone we constantly adjust it, and potentially trick ourselves. Having a written plan can be read months and years later and leave us in no doubt about what our plans were at that time. We can judge the progress ourselves.

The process of Life Planning is soul searching, enlightening, and well worth the effort.

A Life Plan can be as long or as short as you want, but it’s a good idea to have a page for each key aspect of your life – for each Life Area. A worthwhile life plan is created by you, is about you and is for you. It provides written strategy, goals and specific actions – which means it is also a living document. Things change, plans change.

There are 3 particularly good benefits to Life Planning, as discussed in the attached article “3 Reasons Why You Need a Life Plan“.

Start out by writing a simple 1-page Life Plan. For each Life Area – family, work, partner, career, finances, lifestyle, & health – write a Vision statement of the future you, then write Why it is that you want the Vision you have stated. Finally, write down the Goals you need to get to the Vision of the future you want.