Know Thyself Exercise 3: Design your Life - Odyssey Planning
Summary:
Bill Burnett and Dave Evans from Stanford wrote a best selling book called “Designing your Life, How to build a well-lived Joyful life”, where they invite you to think like a designer to design, prototype and build the life you want. They’ve held workshops for over 15 years, bringing people through this creative process to figure out “What do you want to do with the rest of your life?… how do you get there?”: it's never too late!. Odyssey Planning is a brainstorm tool of “how might my life work going forward 5-10 years?”, to come up with ideas and scenarios of “whats next” after the transition moment you are in.
Instructions:
Write 3 5-year prototype timelines of how may your life unfold from now onwards, including professional & personal milestones (bucket list items), a 6 word title and 3 questions that this plan asks (what would you learn in each plan). Its important to pick three distinct life plans:
- Plan 1: What do you think you are going to do? i.e: What would happen if you continued to grow in your current as-is life trajectory?
- Plan 2: What if plan 1 disappeared? i.e.: What if ChatGPT obsoletes your current type of job?: what else could you do?
- Plan 3: What would you do if you didn't care about money? What would you do if you didn't worry about what others think of you?
So each plan will be different, but they may inform and build on each other. From there, choose elements and build a single 10-year plan. This includes a symbol (a graphic element, logo, talisman) that represents this period of your life, can be an inspirational goal or an emotional life meaning.
The plans have 4 dials:
- Resources: Do you have the objective resources (time, money, skill, contacts) to pull this plan off?
- I like it: A temperature gauge: how much do you want it? Are you hot or cold about it?
- Confidence: Do you think you can pull it off? You may not have the resources, but you may feel confident you can pull a plan off.
- Coherence: How much does this plan make sense with who you are? Is it consistent with you, your values, your strengths, your interests? Is it in line with what you say, do and think?
Personal example:
I did this exercise for myself and found it super useful. I brainstormed about continuing a life in HR (plan 1), starting a life in a change management / consulting oriented field (Plan 2) and I also envisioned starting my own company in the field of facilitation / coaching / HR advisory (Plan 3). All viable and exciting trajectories for me, given that they share three key components I search for in a job and am good at (People + Change + Business / Org). So it helped me realize that its not that “I am HR '', but rather that “I do HR”. It helped me let go of my own silo box thinking, and reframe a more open conception of where I want to invest the next chunk of my life in. I can also “do'' other stuff too! 🙂
Resources:
The “Design your Life” landing page: https://designingyour.life/
The design tool and process as explained by one of its co-creators, Bill Burnett: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTZX7NfVeE8&list=PLjwFGCpXfsbeqOfcEdEWWzsgTvPDB-ACN&ab_channel=StanfordLifeDesignLab
The online learning module from Stanford University: https://www.edx.org/learn/design-thinking/stanford-university-odyssey-planning
