Background

Over the past few years, I have taken several stabs at building a Life Plan, inspired primarily by The Art of Manliness and the precursor to Michael Hyatt’s book, Living Forward. With the milestone age of 40 just over the horizon, it feels like a good time to reflect on where I am and refresh my plan for the next 10+ years. To do this, I am asking myself three questions:

  • Who am I?
  • Where do I want to be?
  • What does success look like?

In addition to the two above, each year I will be asking myself two additional questions:

  • Where am I now versus where I want to be?
  • How can I close the gap?

The latter two questions will form the basis of an annual life plan with delivery dates and dashboards to track progress, guided by whatever I settle on for a theme for the year. As of Q4 2020, I have chosen to make my birth month, August, the focus of these with my ‘years’ running from August to July.

The Premise

Life does not occur in vacuo but is lived in the context of community, with different elements (individuals, groups and/or organisations) interacting together. Sociologists capture these interactions – actions and qualities – as ‘ roles‘. If life consists of these interactions, it is not a huge stretch to then suggest that success in life consists of excelling in the various roles an individual has to fill; little daily, weekly, monthly and yearly successes adding up into a life well-lived. One’s roles are necessarily multiplied, which is why for simplification I have grouped mine into what I call Interaction Clusters. The idea of concentric circles seems intuitive for describing this, the radius of the circle being both an indicator of distance from the central self and a measure of the amount of influence/ number of people affected by the roles in that circle. I choose to call these circles then:

  • Personal: High proximity, Small Sphere of Influence (~1 to 20) – mainly family and close friends
  • Professional: Medium proximity, a Medium sphere of influence (~20 to 1000) – mainly work colleagues and fellow members of professional associations
  • Public: Low proximity, Large sphere of influence (>1000) – mainly the wider society, church and remote acquaintances.

Separate from these extrinsic expectations of behaviour, there are also seven dimensions to life which I believe can provide an indication of its health: Spiritual, Physical, People, Mental, Work & Career, Financial and Causes/Charities.

Taken together these (interaction spaces and life domains) will constitute the basis of defining my annual life plans.

Who Am I?

Two main categories come to mind when I reflect on this question: personality and interests. The Oxford English dictionary defines personalit y as the “combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual’s distinctive character”. Of the various personality tests kicking about – most of which renowned psychologist Adam Grant considers dubious at best – the Big Five is perhaps the best. A summary of the results of the various tests I have taken are:

  • INTJ, although I did once also test out as an ISTJ on the MBTI,
  • Low on Extroversion, Average on Emotional stability, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness and High on Intellect/Imagination per the Big Five
  • A Type 5 on the Enneagram

These all seem to suggest I am relatively introverted (some would say shy), stable/ no-frills and chilled which matches up very closely with what people say about me. Feedback from at least one work performance review suggests I can be tentative at times, and prone to looking to deliver perfection rather than a good enough solution from which one can iterate.

My interests are varied but coalesce around:

  • Creative writing: particularly creative nonfiction and poetry,
  • Technology, particularly open source technology and tinkering with tech,
  • Data-centric decision making, decision making under uncertainty
  • Quantified Self, tracking, etc
  • Music, particularly worship/ CCM
  • Running, physical fitness
  • Esoteric knowledge, my current interests being Chaos Theory, Complex Systems amongst others.

What I believe

Inspired by Buster Benson and co, I’m working on a Codex Vitae. Latest version of the work in progress can be found here.

What Does Success Look Like?

Success for me has to both cover both things I am personally invested in (intrinsic) and things others expect of me (extrinsic). For the purpose of defining this life plan, I am considering the context of my interaction clusters (Personal, Professional, Public) and then seven categories which in my view cover all of life: Spiritual, Physical & Health, People, Personal & Mental Development, Financial, Work & Career and Causes & Charities.

For my Personal interaction cluster, I consider success as being the best husband, father, brother, son and friend that I can be:

A husband (of one wife) and father (ideally twin boys and a daughter) whom I provide for, protect, lead, love and model life for/with. In my role as a son to my parents, I respect, honour and provide for them as well as constructively engage and communicate with them, keeping them in the loop as I plan and do life. As a brother to my siblings, I provide leadership and stability, contributing to family life and ensuring we exist as a close-knit community of upwardly mobile siblings, each successful in our own right both professionally and in personal life. As a friend, I participate in mutually beneficial, sharpening relationships with my close friends, cherishing their time and companionship and prioritising them over the wider connections I may have. Undergirding all of this is a commitment to living and eating healthily to minimise the burden of care my latter life will place on these people.

For my Professional interaction cluster, I see success as excelling in my chosen (Corrosion, Materials and Inspection) discipline:

Being the peer or colleague who delivers work of the highest standard, both as part of a team and when required to deliver as an Individual Technical Specialist. When working with others, as a boss (or team leader), in addition to leading by example in delivering work of extremely high quality, I treat everyone else with respect and value, taking time out to know them as individuals and ensuring the right atmosphere for them to flourish is created. Within the context of work I provide mentorship to other less competent members of the team and seek and receive mentorship for myself as required. As a Technical Specialist, I am dedicated to keeping myself on the cutting edge of knowledge in my (Corrosion, Materials and Inspection) discipline and delivering simple, practical, cost-effective solutions to complex problems

For my Public interaction space, success for me is living in and contributing to life in a great church and a great city:

Becoming a global citizen to access to multiple locations and geographies around the world. As such a one, I will have settled long term into life in a great city. There, I live a life that is above board, in keeping with the laws of the land and the socio-political context in so far as it doesn’t go against my Judeo-Christian worldview. In the wider community, as a Responsible Social Citizen, I contribute to life, supporting worthy causes, engaging the less privileged as appropriate and contributing to a vibrant conversation in the social sphere by voting and engaging with the wider social issues in my community. Beyond that, as a committed member of a local church, I contribute to life within that context and serve in some capacity. The overarching desire is to leave something of value in the lives of all I am acquainted with.

For the Seven Life Health categories, success for me is:

Spiritual

  • Living a life that is congruent with my Judeo-Christian beliefs
  • A devoted practitioner of the spiritual disciplines, particularly prayer, bible study/ meditation, fasting and community

Physical & Health

  • Weighing 82kg or less with a body fat percentage of 20% or less
  • Regular practice of running: 3x a week for a total of 30k or more
  • Blood pressure properly managed (130/90 or less)
  • Sleep >7 hours average

People & Social

  • A strong core of close friends and brothers I can depend on and who can depend on me
  • Regular (at least quarterly) meetings with a mentor (work and personal related)
  • Strong, robust relationship with my wife, siblings and father

Personal & Mental Development

  • Learning: Proficient in data science/analytics/ML tools and utilising them on a regular basis to improve life and work decisions/ productivity outcomes,
  • Technology: Enough knowledge to utilise Linux as my daily driver, contribute to the development and delivery of computing projects for kids and teens
  • Creative writing: Published with a collection of poems and essays. Regular (twice a month at least) blogger.
  • Music, particularly worship/ CCM: Ability to play a musical instrument and being part of a worship and creative arts team in a local church

Financial

Work & Career

  • Recognised Corrosion, Materials and Asset Integrity discipline leader in the (oil & gas) industry, equivalent to a regional TA/ SME at a global O&G producer

Causes & Charities

  • Support two or more children via a reputable organisation
  • Get involved in at least one charity at board level/ significant contributor

Ideas for Life

  1. Systems trump signals and are what help us deliver improvements and change as discussed in detail in various studies and books by James Clear, Martin Grundberg, Drew Dyck, BJ Fogg and others
  2. Value begets value. By virtue of living life, one has to interact with others. Only if those interactions beget value will the interaction by memorable and deliver value to me.
  3. Only take advice from people with skin in the game: People across all spectra of life, religion, politics, work and relationships amongst others all have opinions on life and what one should do.  The only advice worth following is that which comes from those who have either proven their relevance by surviving over long amounts of time or those who are exposed to the consequences of the failure of whatever advice they provide (Hat tip to Nassim Taleb)
  4. Money earned is a seed, invest it: Work is currently the mechanism by which I exchange my time and talent for that resource. Given its fungibility, it can easily be converted to almost any other good/ need. To derive maximum value from it, it has to be invested not spent.
  5. Move fast, break things: This quip, made famous as Facebook’s motto is perhaps the perfect riposte to one of my natural negative proclivities, a desire to deliver the perfect correct product. This is a reminder to work towards delivering minimum viable products and take the opportunity to get feedback and iterate towards a better product.
  6. I am responsible: The one constant in all that happens to and around me is ME. Learning to accept that I have personal responsibility for the bulk of that is key to moving forward, I think. For the things I can’t change, I do still have agency - the ability to decide to walk away from it. Personal responsibility then!
  7. In the end, Whole Life Integrity is what matters most: When the chickens come home to roost, whole life integrity is what counts: History is replete with a plethora of folks whose insides didn’t match the image of being scrupulously clean their outsides projected. My aspiration is for whole life integrity to be the watchword of my life. As Nassim Taleb puts it, if your private life conflicts with your intellectual life, it cancels your intellectual opinion not your private life.