Lifestyle Design: Building the Life You Dream of
Building the Life We Dream of
We’re now coming to the last stage in the process. We have defined our objectives (or at least we know how to handle their absence), and we already knew that the end purpose was to dedicate to each activity a duration that is proportional to its impact on our objectives. So what’s left is for us to create our personal puzzle, which means finding activities leading to what we’re aiming at and combining them into a working schedule.
By the way, do note that if you spend more time on an activity with only limited impact on your goals and less time on another one that is more effective, as long as your puzzle in its entirety is working it is in fact OK. But the idea of investing time in something in proportion to its impact on our goals remains a good rule of thumb.
Unfortunately, as you probably guessed, there isn’t any one solution that will always work since the objectives, activities and resources to launch these activities are different for everyone. Additionally it is precisely the process of searching for what to do, how to start it and how to balance it with the rest that allows us to learn and grow. Which is why it’s so important to target what we truly want rather than what seems accessible; that’s how we learn.
Still, here is some general advice on how to go about finding and combining activities into your own puzzle.
The Initial Approach
You must first understand that there exists an unlimited number of activities, since they represent everything we do each day that takes up some time. Moreover, an objective is made up of a certain number of activities – some that disappear once completed, others that come back regularly, some we can predict or initiate and others that suddenly show up, some that cover one single objective, others that cover several, some that are sequential and others simultaneous, etc.
Therefore the first step is to train yourself in linking everything you do every day (your activities) to your objectives, in order to develop the habit of consciously investing your time instead of being on autopilot all the time and letting anything and anyone catch your attention and define what you’re spending your time on. Keep it lighthearted though – this exercise should be fun and not stressful.
Developing this habit is certainly essential and the realizations awaiting in the process will be key in adjusting your life. There’s no rush though, and it’s perfectly fine to simply list your observations and conclusions if you don’t see yet how to modify what needs adjusting.
Also do remember that there are elements in your list of objectives that are implied and don’t need to be clearly spelled out, but that some of your activities will have to cover nonetheless: eating, sleeping, showering, relaxing, etc.
Now, while in the process of creating this new habit and after you begin to better understand what you spend your days on, it’s time to make an initial assessment of your current situation. To do so, find a quiet spot to sit with your list of objectives and your observations, and have an honest look at your current activities and their link with what you’re aiming at. You should be able to identify what’s missing and what should be removed or changed.
If some of the actions to take are easy to implement then do it right away. However sometimes we need to wait until we have something able to replace what we want to change, or everything is so tightly connected together that we must tread carefully and take it step by step. So at this stage it’s enough to simply identify problems and the result we want to reach instead.
Next, we’re going to use the tools introduced in the following two parts to act and create our puzzle, then keep it up-to-date. Making a general assessment once a year is never a bad idea though. For instance right after you’ve updated your list of objectives.
Note
On that note: although my personal experience is based exclusively on managing my own business, I did try to write this post to make it useful no matter how you generate your income.
General Rules about Our Activities
The activities that make up our objectives should for the most part be fun. In other words, the road leading to what you’re aiming for should be enjoyable to walk most of the time. So if day after day some activities weigh down on you, exhaust you, kill off your inspiration, eat up your energy and so on, then it’s time to seriously look for an alternative. And the risk is especially great for money-making activities (the “I hate my job!” syndrome) because they’re related to the one objective that won’t budge and which therefore has a higher risk of leading to uninteresting activities – while you can easily remove other activities if you don’t like them and replace them by more interesting ones, or remove the objective along with them.
Note
Next, remember some activities leading up to your objectives will be tedious; you just can’t escape it. Therefore you must develop the ability to determine whether the path you’re taking is the right one with a bit of a slow period, or if the issue is with the road itself (which you then must change). A good test to figure out whether you’re on the right track is to remind yourself of why you’re doing X; as long as this end result is motivating then keep moving on, even if some intermediate steps aren’t that exciting.
To be honest, looking for and contacting production companies in an attempt to launch my animation project isn’t the most interesting bit. But it’s just a step (among others) and the end result is my top priority. So the spirit is simply to finish what you start. Some ideas coming up are quick to implement, others take more time and so we have to force ourselves to complete them. Because one thing is certain: what isn’t completed never leads anywhere. And what a waste it is indeed to let an objective die simply because we’re lacking the discipline to complete a boring milestones! And this is especially important when you’re progressing blindly because you don’t know how to reach a goal (see below). In this case it’s impossible to guess what will or will not work out and the consequences of giving up aren’t immediately visible.
If, however, you lose sight of the destination behind the boring activities, then take a break until you’re able to decide whether it’s still worth it. If not, do something else. And if the destination remains important to you but the uninteresting activities aren’t temporary (again, the job we hate syndrome) then it’s time to change them.
Finally, some activities and periods of time may not be fun, but not because of a lack of interest; because of fear. That’s what happens when you begin to leave your comfort zone (and it SHOULD happen if you’re targeting what you truly want rather than what’s merely within reach).
My best advice to decide what to do in this case is to imagine your options if you don’t go ahead with what scares you: if you’re honest with yourself, can you see an alternative? If yes then it may mean there’s a better activity for you out there, or your discomfort is a sign that what you’re setting out to do is not a part of your path. If, on the other hand, there aren’t other options except giving up or settling for less, then you know you must go ahead no matter your fears.
When I decided I’d move to Japan, it was a scary project. Leaving a country I knew, my friends, my comfortable apartment, my whole life for the last 10 years… And all the paperwork, uncertainty and planning ahead really weren’t encouraging. But I only had to imagine the alternative (i.e. to cancel the project and continue life in Sweden) to know there actually was no other way forward. And with that certainty, I did what had to be done.
Also, sometimes when getting a lot of new information or perspectives, or when imagining ourselves in a brand new situation, we can feel overwhelmed (especially when it shakes our vision of the world or opens our eyes on many things we didn’t previously see) and may react by shutting off what makes us uncomfortable. To deal with this I usually give myself a couple of days to assimilate all that knowledge: I take time to get familiar with the new perspective and to make it my own, I try to estimate the consequences, I let my mind play with the new ideas, compare them with what I know, etc. And with time they become more comfortable and I may start taking small steps to act on them if such steps exist, or simply launch it for good.
The best examples I have are my conversations with several acquaintances during my road trip from Sweden to France in autumn 2019. I was quickly introducing the TEDx Talk I would be giving soon, and that got them talking about their own life, and especially their career and the possibility of changing it. And I noticed that the mere thought of doing something different than what they had done for almost a decade was so scary that as soon as I suggested it, they would find all sorts of excuses to push it away. Yet they were the ones telling me about their dreams, and I was simply pushing the logic one step further!
I ended up telling them to stop rejecting the idea simply because it was scary and they couldn’t see right away how to make it happen, and instead to let it settle in their mind: to take the time to look at it, to imagine how different their life would be, to look at the consequences (both good and bad), etc. After all, we’re only playing with our imagination and it doesn’t cost anything to think about it. And the funny thing is that simply by accepting to look at this scary perspective and to tell me about it, they slowly began to feel some excitement and to see tiny baby steps they could take to explore further (such as talking with someone in the field, or searching for information online, etc.). And that’s usually how major changes begin; a scary idea we need time to get accustomed to, that evolves into concrete actions.
Now don’t use this as an excuse to avoid acting when the time is right! If the idea is big enough, you’ll never be entirely ready to take it on, so the point is simply to let most of the initial confusion and paralysis go away, before looking at the alternatives (as mentioned above) and acting if this is the right way, no matter the lingering fear.
When Activities are Known
Now that your initial assessment is done and your mindset is focused on your activities and their link with your objectives, it’s time to create your puzzle. It doesn’t matter whether the changes to implement are huge or negligible (throughout the years there will always be times with important changes to make and times when everything is working out); the first part is to look at known activities, which includes your current activities, opportunities coming your way, something you wish to start while knowing exactly how to proceed, etc. The common point each time is that you can see clearly what to invest your time on, with a general idea of the duration.
In this situation, your job is to evaluate how the activities you’re looking at will impact your objectives and then decide whether to start them or not. If you go ahead, you must choose whether they should remain as they are or if they require adjustments, before finding a place for them in your schedule (and therefore create your puzzle).
Let’s look at some advice on how to go about this.
A. Two Major Rules to Follow as Much as Possible
Keep in mind the following two rules whenever you must make a decision:
Whenever an activity leads to an objective but isn’t the objective itself (for instance generating an income through activity X), we’ll try to limit as much as possible the time spent on it because what we care about is the result. That’s the rule I apply when I try to invoice per project rather than per hour; I can then work as fast as possible (and thus reduce the amount of time spent on this activity) without losing money
In your quest for efficiency, be careful though not to maim an activity to the point that is no longer serves the same objectives. For instance, still in the business world, every time establishing a relationship with a customer is important to me, I won’t try to decrease the frequency of our video conferences; it wouldn’t really impact my income-relate goal but I’d lose all benefits for my network-building goal.
However if the activity IS the objective then the time to invest in it will depend on your level of interest (basically doing what must be done until it gets boring) and the available time in your puzzle – and if you want to spend more time on it you’ll have to adjust the rest.
We seek to increase the time invested in an activity only if it allows us to cover more objectives and/or to better cover them. That’s what I do for example whenever I offer to pay a visit to certain customers that are geographically close by. Indeed, my experience tells me face-to-face meetings can lead to more jobs from them, on top of potentially unlocking new opportunities. So I increase the time invested in contacting these leads because it has a positive impact on my money-making goal.
However once we factor in rule number 1 exposed above, we understand that we’ll always try to limit the time invested to the minimum necessary to get the results we want.
B. Two Main Tools
To help review known activities and organize them into a working schedule, I use two models:
Try to break down your objectives into criteria that allow you to evaluate how aligned with your goals an activity actually is. Some criteria are binary while others resemble a scale.
You don’t need to go into too much details; it’s enough to have a general idea of which parts of an activity you should pay attention to. And of course you must update this list every time you change your objectives (it’s a good idea then to review known activities in light of your new priorities).
In my case for instance, whenever an activity comes up, I first check whether it generates an income or not. If it does, I’ll check the estimated hourly rate and the level of flexibility in terms of location and schedule. I’ll also look at its ability to make me meet people that are useful to me (may it be friends of business contacts) and increase my reputation, I’ll check whether it can bring me closer to dubbing and/or my animation series project (even indirectly), etc.
This helps to judge the intrinsic value of an activity as regards to our objectives and the time it requires and allows us to compare them together to identify the most effective ones, before deciding whether to add them to our puzzle. It’s also an excellent method to review complex activities, such as a job offer, by focusing on the bits that matter to us to judge their efficiency (these bits then turn into items to negotiate if they aren’t satisfying).
Try to gather your activities into categories based on the type of activity and/or the objective covered, then give them a priority ranking following the logic “I will first invest my free time in activities from category 1. If there’s time left, I’ll spend it on category 2.” Etc. And remember that sometimes, it’s up to you to set a maximum amount of time to be invested in a given category.
In my case, when arriving in Japan in March 2020, I had 4 categories: top priority to money-making activities (category 1) until I reached the “typical life” income level (beyond that, the priority level decreased to minimum). On my free time, priority given to activities that allow me to meet friends and business contacts and to increase my reputation (category 2, whose upper limit is based on my feelings; when I have enough outings and meetings planned during the week I naturally move on to category 3). On my free time, priority given to administrative work that I must carry out alone in front of my computer (category 3, whose upper limit I set by limiting the number of items on my “to do” list to what seems the most useful). Finally on whatever free time I have left, I can visit Kyoto and Japan (category 4).
This is a huge help to combine all the pieces of our puzzle into a schedule that is flexible enough to include unpredictable and/or unknown activities (see next part). Moreover it helps pinpointing unbalances in our life; whenever I think I’m missing something I just go through each category and it helps me easily identify where the problem is and what type of activity I should try to start – which sometimes leads me to reversing priorities a bit, for instance by visiting the city while I’m not done with money-making activities.
Finally, here too it’s a good idea to go through the criteria defining your categories and their priority level whenever you update your objectives, and then to evaluate the consequences on your schedule.
C. In Short
So, to review known activities:
In the real world it is of course very difficult to know the impact of an activity on our objectives before actually starting it. Therefore it’s up to us to gather as much information as possible beforehand and to decide whether to give it a shot or not. And if we do proceed, we then must regularly review this impact and decide whether to keep going or not.
Note
I personally use a “And why not after all?” activity list where I add every idea and opportunity that don’t really belong to my standard framework but that I nonetheless wish to launch. Sometimes it leads to interesting contacts, sometimes I learn something, and sometimes it just makes yet another fun story to tell my friends! That’s the very reason why, for instance, I volunteered as staff member at a manga & anime fair in Kyoto.
This balance between following one’s heart and a colder, more methodical approach helps to avoid going ahead with every opportunity coming our way and to evaluate the consequences of our choices, while still recognizing that we don’t control everything and that we must learn to experiment and draw conclusions afterwards.
When Activities are Unknown
The whole TEDx and most of this post rely on the assumption that we know our objectives and the activities to implement in order to reach them. We’ve already been through what to do if we don’t know our objectives, and similarly it’s rather common not to know how to proceed, even with a very clear goal. It’s actually a good sign as it means we’re targeting what we truly want to reach and no longer what seems accessible only!
So although this part isn’t directly dealing with the creation of our puzzle and looks instead at how to find the activities leading to our objectives, it remains a vital component in putting together the life we dream of.
A. The Mindset to Have
We take the same perspective as when we don’t know our objectives; we must accept that our logic is unable to determine how to reach X, or that the path we do see isn’t the right one. Usually that’s because the necessary resources aren’t immediately obvious or available. At the same time we must recognize that our emotions know the way and guide us. And so we’re blindly moving forward – the goal may be clear but not the path leading to it (and therefore the activities it is made of). To discover them we’ll have to “follow our gut feeling”.
Now if the objective is clear then we can treat activities we find along the way just like any known activity (see previous part), although in practice we’re mostly going to act upon them right away without much analysis since they are our only option on an unclear path.
If, on the other hand, the goal isn’t clear (which means it’s difficult to use the tools introduced before to invest our time strategically since there aren’t any objectives to use as reference), we’ll just invest time in whatever activities resonate with us when they come up. And if needed, we’ll decrease the ones that aren’t as interesting, even without knowing where this is leading.
That’s what I did during the summer and autumn of 2019 when I didn’t know yet where I was headed but I could feel my association and my endless search for customers had become less important than my need to travel and visit old friends.
In an effort to illustrate the mindset underlying my way of dealing with unclear objectives and/or activities, I use the following image (which also helps me maintain that perspective, especially when I start to worry or to wonder how I’ll reach this or that): imagine we’re driving a train. It’s more or less always moving forward without our help; this is our life unfolding and never stopping. The final destination being our own death anyway, what matters is the journey, and especially the stations on the way, which represent our objectives.
Sometimes we’ve identified these stations and we know where we’re going, and sometimes not – to the point of discovering our destination only after reaching it in some instances! Sometimes the rail track in front of us and up to the next station is fully visible, and sometimes we see but a couple of meters ahead. But in either case, whether we know the stations (our objectives) and the path (the various activities) or not, we’ll get there. Our job is all about reading the signposts that tell us when and where to fork in order to stay on the right course.
Also remember it’s not up to us to choose the order in which we get to each station/objective, when we get there or the road leading there; we can only follow the rail track and fork at the right time. At no point do we have the ability to influence the journey, and working hard in doing so is the best way to slow the whole process down, to start worrying and to get frustrated!
This implies that rather than building the way leading to what we’re aiming at, we should instead try to align ourselves with an existing path. Sometimes it’s quite easy, especially when we don’t know our objectives and/or how to reach them (then we have no choice but to see what’s going to happen!). However other times our knowledge and resources are enough to let us see a potential path, and if the process is straightforward and without surprises then all is well – that’s usually the case when accumulated experience allows us to be more and more successful at something (or when we’re not aiming high enough). But it also happens that we think we know where to go and what to do, whereas this isn’t the right way: we see opportunities where there are none, we fight bitterly to take a path that doesn’t exist… As I once fought trying to convince companies of my skills, convinced as I was that I first had to be an employee before starting my own business.
Next, missing a turn or taking the wrong direction can take different shapes: sometimes it’s a missed opportunity (for instance not daring to contact a key person), sometimes life starts to loop and nothing changes (for instance hearing again and again that we should do X and nothing happens until it’s done), sometimes it feels like the train has reached the end of the track and stopped (for instance my departure to Japan when nothing seemed achievable in Sweden anymore). But in any case, it’s never too late to get back on the right track: a missed opportunity will come back under a different disguise, we just have to launch what’s blocking us to leave the endless loop or to change track to resume the journey.
Lastly, to know when to fork and towards which direction, we must keep our eyes open and have a clear mind to be able to follow our intuition and act on ideas and opportunities coming our way (it doesn’t matter whether they make sense or not). For we must act – there’s no way we’ll reach our objectives by twiddling our thumbs! – but at the right time. And all the negative emotions that disturb our peace of mind are like fog and rain, making it harder to see the signposts that tell us when and where to turn.
In practice, for some of my objectives that are clear but that I don’t know how to reach, I simply follow ideas popping up and opportunities that resonate with me, which means following the signposts telling me to fork, without knowing the whole itinerary, when I’ll arrive and from where. And whenever my mind is confused, I start by searching for inner peace before taking any new decision.
B. Feeling Good to Know Where to Go
When we don’t know what the next step on our way is, the first thing to do is to feel good, because that’s how inspiration and ideas come and how we’re able to recognize opportunities and have the necessary energy to catch them. Back to the image of a train, it’s like letting the storm pass until we can see the landscape clearly again.
To do so, I’ve found four methods I always go back to, usually in the order below:
I strive to notice and be thankful for all the small things I like each day. However most importantly, every evening I offer my thanks for the best thing that happened to me that day. It’s a habit I created after reading Rhonda Byrne’s “The Magic”, and the idea is to force ourselves to look at all the positive things (to pick the best one) and to forget the negative ones.
If it’s not enough, I take time to list 10 things I’m thankful for having in my life (I go into enough details to feel grateful). It’s especially effective to help take some distance from our worries, because when something isn’t working or worries us we tend to only see that, and learning to distance ourselves in order to look at everything we already have helps us accept what’s missing, make it a priority but without attaching negative emotions to it.
I look at the future imagining I’ve succeeded at getting what I’m missing. As a matter of fact, I only allow myself to look at the future this way. If I find myself thinking of failures, lacks and so on, I either transform those images, or I stop and go back to being thankful for what I already have (see previous point).
When my mind isn’t peaceful enough to imagine a beautiful future or when I don’t have enough energy to focus on what’s working despite frustration, worries and other negative emotions, I just start meditating. This allows my thoughts to rest and helps me disconnect my emotions from them, to find inner peace.
Sometimes sadness, despair or anger are so strong that nothing works. That’s when I just grab my pen and my notebook and let my emotions run free (usually with the adequate music background in order to bring up such emotions). It helps emptying our mind and finding peace (also due to exhaustion).
If all else has failed, there’s one last trick I have that always works if done correctly. But it should be used sparingly lest you paralyze yourself with fear and indecision or completely lose any sense of purpose and motivation. And that powerful yet dangerous tool consists in reminding yourself of your own mortality. Not by mindlessly repeating meaningless words but by stopping everything you’re doing, sitting back, looking around yourself here and now, and imagining that by the time you’re done doing whatever you’re doing, or when leaving the room you’re in, or whatever very concrete and impending deadline you can set, you’re going to die.
If you’re doing that exercise for real and truly manage to convince yourself, I can promise you’re going to see your life in a completely different way – perhaps for the first time ever. Everything around you will take on a new meaning, everything becomes more vivid, more intense, your worries fade away. Of course you may also scare yourself senseless, but since in this exercise there’s no escaping your own death, it’s also useless to fear it. You should instead fully enjoy every single second, because that’s all you have left.
This exercise is going to burn everything cluttering your mind and preventing you from being peaceful and happy. Additionally, when (hopefully) you don’t die after the deadline you set is reached, you’ll be thankful for the amazing gift of being alive a while longer… while knowing that the deadline has only been pushed – not removed – and by an unclear amount of time. Because although this is only an exercise, it’s actually based on a very deep truth. More on that in the conclusion.