Life OS

Life OS

After recently listening to Cal Newport's - Deep Questions podcast I decided to think more about my system for managing life goals.

The system suggests the following docs:

• core plan or root plan
• value plans
  • personal
  • professional
• maintenance plan
• progress plan

This docs is my personal interpretation of that system.

Why plan?

The reality is that life is measured in years, yet lived by the day, hour, minute, second.

Life expectancy is up so in my situation, if I'm lucky, I can expect a good 50 years of ... life!

50 years is a looooooong time without a map of what you care about, what you want to do, where you want to go, and who you want to be.

To some planning might remove some of the fun from the next few years. I've recently reread the The tail end article from WaitButWhy to make me realise that I plan not to decide what I want to happen, but to make sure that everything I want does happen.

Professionally, software development is and ever evolving field and as an engineer I need to chart the best course into the future, whilst making sure I'm still relevant now.

The ever evolving plan

I've used a few methods to carve out this plan in the past. I wanted to outline the resources and current plan I've used so far.

The one method that I've abused a lot over the years was 'do more of what you like', which explain why I spent more time playing video games, that studying in high school.

Should we do more of what we like or should we find areas where that selfish goal also has a an altruistic side-effect.

This is where another great resource came in for me, 80000hours.org. The site highlights the greatest issues facing humanity and informs the reader how to pursue the biggest impact jobs working on those issues.

I use the guidance from 80000h as a moral compass that allows me to gauge if I'm making an impact.

For planning I tend to run yearly goals, determined annually in June. I use the YearCompass framework to help me reflect on the past year and chart the next.

For day to day operation I use a Bullet Journal system. Every month I'll use my yearly goals to set monthly aims, and then I daily / weekly aim to spend time towards those goals.

I usually timebox things in the calendar in order to make sure I do them or spend the time.

Another important concept to mention are distractions. My aim is to constantly limit distraction to allow more time for working on the plan.

Root plan

A document where core systems and strategies to organise life are stored. Instead of storing everything in your head - write it down, flesh it out.

This plan must be generic and should not capture the specific rules.

The root will point to other more specific documents:

Value plan

An outline of roles responsibilities and the core values I need to display in those.

Personal plan

A document on all personal goals and processes.

Professional plan

A document on all professional goals and processes.

Maintenance procedure

How do I maintain these systems - when, where, what.

A good idea here is to think about how data enters the system and how it leaves it.

Operational plan

How do things get done and what are some of the habits and process you use to achieve the things on the plan.

Metrics

What are you going to track in order to measure the system.