Life Planning

Life planning is not necessarily a common occurrence among Christian leaders today, but it is gaining recognition and momentum. Effectively, it is a process of creating an overall strategy for our lives. The idea is to focus all of your resources and various roles (disciple of Jesus, husband/wife, parent, owner/employee, friend, etc.) so that they are in alignment with God’s will for your individual life.

In this blog, I have completed a series of posts that take you step by step through the process I use for my life plan. I also included the tools I use in that process. I have told you that I am not even close to having this whole process figured out! To this day, after several years of working on my life plan, I still struggle with consistency and focus at times.

Looking For Improvements

For that reason, I am always on the lookout for another tool, or modification to my current tools, that could help me do a better job of executing this life plan. Wherever I see an article about life plans I clip it to Evernote. If I get a chance to download someone else’s diagram of a dashboard, I do it.

Though I still do not have it perfected by any means, I have made some modifications over the years that have helped. Most of these changes have come in the way of simplifying the process.

A New Idea!

Roughly a month ago, I read a book that gave me an idea I thought could be a big help to me. The book was called Seven Days in Utopia, by David Cook. If you have not read the book, then I strongly urge you to do so. The movie is also good, but the book is more helpful in teaching us about life due to the greater detail.

In that book, the main character (a professional golfer) was advised that he needed his own game plan every time he approached a tournament. He was told that his ability to stick to his game plan would determine his success. If he were easily thrown off his plan by opponents or circumstances, then he would suffer for it.

Daily Game Plan

As I read, I realized I could use a similar process in my daily life. If I could come up with a daily “game plan” based on my life plan, then I may be more consistent in my execution. The more I thought about it the more I liked the idea.

As I thought about what I wanted this daily game plan to look like, I first determined that I wanted to keep it as simple as possible. That meant it would not be able to include every aspect of my life plan or even the dashboard I use to simplify that. It would have to leave out some things if I planned to use it every day.

I also decided I wanted to be able to carry it with me throughout the day. I did not want something that would be too difficult to refer to often with a quick glance. Since I move around a lot during the day – from office to office and building to building – this was going to be an important factor to get right.

Finally, I wanted it to be something I could complete every morning in my quiet time. It needed to be customizable based on what any particular day could hold. I wanted it to only contain information I need for that one day.

Not Yet Perfected!

I will close by saying that I have not completely figured it out yet. I have spent the past month trying various layouts of this game plan. I have tried it on paper and electronically. I have skipped parts on some days and other parts on other days.

I am pleased to report that the results so far are good! I am seeing improvement in the effectiveness of my days. While I am not seeing an overnight tripling of my productivity, I am seeing some very clear benefits. I have seen enough improvement so far to keep me working on the idea.

Details To Come!

In my next post, I am going to show you my daily game plan as it stands today. I will take you through each part of it step-by-step and explain the reasoning behind each. I hope you will find some benefit to the process.

I will go ahead and ask you to take a look and give me feedback. I am interested in your ideas and critiques. If you see something I have missed, please call me out on it! I see this as an opportunity to vet this tool and improve it.

Feedback?

I would love to hear from you on what I have shared so far. Do you see this as a worthy process or do you think I am a nut case for even trying?!? Either way, please give me your comments below and lets see where everyone stands on this!

Do you have a life plan that is helping you to be intentional?

Do you see the need for a daily game plan to work from?

What do you use to accomplish this?