Happy New Year, everyone! It is time to do the really hard work of putting your plan together.

Once you have your lifetime goals identified, the next bit of work is project planning. Here you determine what you need to do, by when, to achieve your lifetime goals. For each lifetime goal, respond to the following questions, in this order, with a list of goals and corresponding due dates:

• What must I do in 10 years to meet my lifetime goals?

• What must I do in 5 years to meet my 10-year goals?

• What must I do in 3 years to meet my 5-year goals?

• What must I do in 1 year to meet my 3-year goals?

• What must I do in 6 months to meet my 1-year goals?

• What must I do this month to meet my 6-month goals?

• What must I do this week to meet my 1-month goals?

• What must I do today to meet my 1-week goals?

Example

Here is an example from my own life. When I developed this process over 20 years ago, I had a lifetime goal to get my Ph.D. However, I didn't put a timeframe on it until July 2004. Here is what my plan looked like on July 1, 2004.

Lifetime goal identified in 2004 planning: Have my Ph.D. before my 60th birthday
[Note: I was 53 in 2004 and didn't yet have a Masters degree.]

• What must I do in 10 years (by 2014) to meet my lifetime goals?
  Complete dissertation and defense by May 2011.
  Get my Ph.D. by July 1, 2011 (my 60th birthday).

• What must I do in 5 years (by 2009) to meet my 10-year goals?
  Complete Ph.D. coursework by May 2009.
  Begin dissertation research.

• What must I do in 3 years (by 2007) to meet my 5-year goals?
  Get my Masters degree by December 2006.
  Get enrolled in a Ph.D. program to start in September of 2007.

• What must I do in 1 year (by July 2005) to meet my 3-year goals?
  Apply to Masters degree program by Jauary 2005 to start in September 2005.
  Apply for financial aid by April 2005.

• What must I do in 6 months (by January 1, 2005) to meet my 1-year goals?
  Choose Masters degree program by July 2004.
  Investigate financial aid options.

• What must I do this month (July 2004) to meet my 6-month goals?
  Investigate Masters degree programs by February 2004.

• What must I do this week (July 1-7, 2004) to meet my 1-month goals?
  Investigate Masters degree programs.

• What must I do today (July 1, 2004) to meet my 1-week goals?
  By the time I got to this point, I was so excited about the possibilities, I wanted to do the investigation that day.

So far, I am right on track to meet this goal.

Tomorrow: Sustaining the Plan

Often the problem we have with goal setting is our own self-talk. We put limitations on our thinking based on a variety of reasons from the way we were brought up to the situations and commitments we have made for ourselves.

I invite you to free your mind--to begin with a beginner's mind--without attribution or constraint in this next exercise.

You will be making two lists (or drawing two pictures--if you would like to try a non-linear approach).

List 1: The Wish List

This is the list that you often squelch before it gets written or even thought about. What if money, time, resources, circumstances were no object? Make a list of the things you want to acquire, places you want to visit and/or live, people you want to meet, money you would like to make, recognition you would like to receive, books you want to write, businesses you want to start, and so on.

List 2: Lifetime Goals

Make a list of what you would like to accomplish in your lifetime for each of the roles/categories you identified in Exercise 3. Do not worry about time constraints at this point.

Tomorrow: Write your plan.

This post is the next in a series of exercises to help you plan for the coming year.

First, some background: We are not alone in this world. We are all connected. This is not some metaphysical, new-age hype. This is physical reality. At the quantum level, you cannot tell where you end and someone else begins. My actions impact you; your actions impact me. Our actions are not limited by space or time. Chaos theory tells us that  subtle changes in complex systems, given the right set of circumstances, can have far-reaching implications across time and space. As an individual, you are a complex system within an even more complex system we call society. When you make personal decisions, the world changes, not in some false-duality, where one has to change before the other changes, but simultaneously.

There are two parts to this exercise:

• Part 1: Meditate on the impact of your decisions on future generations.

• Part 2: Develop a personal mission statement

Part 1: Meditation

Get into a quiet space. Close your eyes and consider what you want your children's children 7 times down the line to say about your generation and the collective decisions you made. Imagine the world you would like to see them living in. Open your eyes and record your impressions. Take note of your feelings as they arise during this exercise.

Part 2: Your Personal Mission Statement

The cycle of life dictates that we all must pass on eventually. Develop a written, personal mission statement based on how you want to be remembered. This, coupled with your impressions from part 1 of this exercise, becomes the basis for all other life decisions.

Close your eyes and imagine your own funeral. All your friends, family, and co-workers are there. There are also acquaintances and people you have touched, but who didn't know you personally. What are these people saying about you? Listen closely. Open your eyes and write a bulleted list of the comments you "heard." This list becomes the basis for your mission statement. Using active voice, present tense, write your mission statement. It only needs to be one or two sentences. You should be able to remember it easily.

Tomorrow: Who are you?

It's that time of year again. January 1 marks the start of a new year. We look back at the previous year sometimes amazed at how much we accomplished, sometimes disappointed at what did or didn't happen. How do you feel about 2008? How would you like to feel about 2009? Now is the time to consider the possibilities for the new year, not as resolutions (which people seem to forget about by the end of February), but as written objectives which you will monitor throughout the year.

This week I will post a series of exercises, one each day, to help you get your 2009 plan in place. These exercises represent the short version of a process I originally developed for myself. It works for me and many others who have taken my workshops. It can work for you, too. Take the framework and make it your own. Change it to fit your life and your circumstances. Treat it as a process, revisiting it on a regular basis to track your progress. This keeps your life in front of you and enables you to enjoy the journey while working on your goals and dreams.

The "Strategic Planning for Your Life" framework consists of a series of exercises designed to inform you about yourself. There is a purpose to each exercise. Therefore, it is important that you do not take shortcuts. These exercises help you make explicit the following information:

• How you are unique and what gives you joy

• Why you are here

• Who you are (what roles you play)

• What you want to accomplish

• What is your timeline for accomplishing your goals and dreams

• How to sustain the plan

Exercise 1: What makes you unique? What gives you joy?

The first exercise is designed to elevate and make you aware of your emotions. It also celebrates your uniqueness in the world. Pay particular attention to the feelings you have writing each list, especially the list about what gives you joy.

In this order, write:

1. The tasks you like to do
   These tasks you enjoy, but you may not care to do them all time.

2. The tasks you don't like to do
   Doing these tasks creates internal stress and tension; if you never have to do these tasks again, it will be too soon!

3. The tasks you do well
   You don't necessarily love to do these tasks, but they are easy for you. Many people look to you to do these tasks, because they know they will be done right.

4. The tasks you don't do well
   There will always be someone else who can do these tasks better than you. When you try to do them, you feel anxiety and frustration.

5. What gives you absolute joy
   What is your "fire in the belly?" These tasks energize you. You can do them all day and never get tired. You can't wait to get up nd do it all again the next day.

Tomorrow: Why are you here on Earth at this place, at this time?

[Note: I go through my entire process for myself every January 1. You are invited to join me this year at my house from 9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m., if you would rather have an in-person guided workshop. Let me know if you would like to attend: judy@mentorfactorinc.com]

This blog is about getting back to basics. It is about personal cybernetics...the spin of the Ouroboros. It is about reflection and getting back to who I am at my core and how my life has shaped me. Sometimes, when I just can't seem to see the forest for the trees (which is where I have been much of this semester), I sit and journal without worrying about flow or organization. This morning was one of those times. My writing took me back to the beginning (or very nearly close to it).

One of the things I wanted to do for my final project in both my David Bohm class and my Integral Sustainability class was to update the workbook for my life planning workshop with new information discovered in both classes and other classes in the program I am in at CIIS. However, this has been feeling much too huge. Here is why.

Back in my hippy days in the early 70's, I majored in fine arts. My concentration was in illustration using graphite and ink and water color washes. I also had a love of producing wall hangings, tapestries, using different colored burlap. I pulled threads to create the design. I replaced threads with wool or cloth or rewove or macraméd the burlap to create texture and amplify the design. I kept all the various yarns and cloths and other elements (tectures, colors, visual cues, repeating patterns, etc.) in separate baskets. I never felt compelled to use all of the elements from all of the baskets in every tapestry. In fact, I realized that the design worked better visually to keep the design simple and clean using from 3 to 5 elements.

It occurred to me that I am still doing this work. Even in my 30 years as a technical communicator, I have done this work. In all systems (a tapestry, a user interface, a communication program), there must first be a description of the outputs, an identification of inputs appropriate to the generation of the outputs, and a description of how inputs will be processed to get the outputs described. I already see the end product for my dissertation and subsequent life's work in my mind. Many times I have set out to mind-map what I see as the connections to this end product, but the map keeps getting bigger and bigger. Each element on the map represents a basket for this "tapestry" and these baskets are bursting the seams.

My ultimate goal is to reach the widest possible audience with a transformational method people can use every day to facilitate awareness and the ability to choose to be happy and compassionate. I want to determine the best way to convey the underlying concepts associated with this method without making them too complicated or unusable, but also without resorting to reductionist over-simplification. I fully suspect that this will be a delicate dance.

The good news is, though, that I don't have to use all the elements in all the baskets to weave my tapestries. I can have multiple tapestries that convey different connecting elements. Here is the list of my current BIG "baskets" (in no particular order) as they cover the rooms of my mind and the physical rooms in my house (in the form of books and articles). These baskets are full of elements which interact with other elements in other baskets:

• The thinking of David Bohm
• Gentle action (Peat)
• Cybernetics/process (Bateson)
• Great change (Goerner)
• Transdisciplinarity
• Movement
• Relationships
• Choice
• Compassion
• Mind
• Body
• Spirit

My next post will be an initial list of potential "tapestries" and the elements I will use to "weave" them.