Determine a path to where you want to go
How to determine a life path that will take you from where you are now to where you want to go.
In the previous life design phase, you determined where you want to go by setting a design goal for the life area you want to improve. If you have not yet completed the previous phase, you can find the instructions by clicking on this link: https://www.a3lifedesign.com/blog-english/determine-where-you-want-to-go
In this phase you will determine a life path that will take you from where you are now to where you want to go. To get more fulfilment out of your life, you usually don't have to make major changes in your life, such as changing jobs, ending the relationship with your life partner or moving abroad. A few relatively small changes in the right direction can often be enough to gradually improve what you already have until it’s good enough for you. In this life design phase, you are not yet making any final decisions or entering into any commitments. You're just exploring options.
Note: If you encounter a major change in your life situation, or feel completely stuck, it may be a worthwhile exercise to design three significantly different life paths for the next five years of your life.
https://www.a3lifedesign.com/blog-english/design-three-paths-for-the-next-five-years
To determine a life path to where you want to go, produce as many ideas as possible that can help you achieve your design goal. Then group similar ideas and choose the three most promising ideas that can take you in the desired direction.
1️⃣ Generate many ideas
In the previous life design phase you formulated your design question: How can I <what you want to achieve>?
Using your design question as a guide, you will produce as many ideas as possible to get from where you are now to where you want to go. This creative process of producing ideas is about coming up with ways to achieve what you want to achieve. Which ideas will help you in the right direction?
Your first idea is rarely your best idea. It is often the most obvious idea or the one that immediately comes to mind. It may not be well thought out due to the human urge to find quick solutions to problems. And it may be based on your existing beliefs and assumptions, which can limit its creativity and novelty.
When it comes to ideas, more is better. A variety of ideas often means a diverse set of perspectives and approaches. This diversity can lead to more comprehensive problem solving and innovative solutions. This increases the chance of finding a life path that successfully and efficiently takes you where you want to go. Take your time with this process. It can take days or even weeks to generate enough diverse ideas.
Write down all the ideas you get. Do not apply any censorship, criticism or early judgment. All ideas are welcome. Especially wild, crazy ideas that take you outside the mental box in which you are trapped.
Write each idea down on a sticky note, on a card, or electronically so that you can easily group similar ideas together in the next step of this process.
There are many ways to generate ideas for your design question. Below are some suggestions to help you on your way. It doesn’t really matter how you do it, as long as you generate enough ideas to achieve your design goal.
👉 In an earlier life design phase, you figured out what to do with your life (see the ‘Related life design blog posts’ section if you haven’t done so). You created a list of activities that you enjoy or consider important. Reviewing this list may give you some ideas for your design question.
👉 Almost all of our problems and their solutions have already been researched and described by others. Gather ideas from reliable sources, such as blogs, social media, (non-fiction) books, scientific journals, documentaries, or podcasts that contain relevant information for your design question.
👉 Collaboration is a fundamental aspect of designing and building your life. Talk to others to get ideas, such as your partner, family members, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, or experts. Involve your life design team if you have one. Tell people what you want to achieve and ask for suggestions on what they think you could do.
👉 Go to places where you can get inspiration for ideas, such as a lecture or meeting, nature or a city. Be open to whatever you come across to get ideas that may be relevant to your design question.
👉 Generate ideas by thinking about what changes to certain aspects of yourself or your environment would help you achieve your design goal. This may include changes to unhelpful parts of your self-image, limiting thoughts and beliefs, fear of rejection or failure, unhelpful behaviour and habits, and your social and physical environment. Small changes can have major effects.
👉 To achieve your design goal, what activities should you start or do more of, and what activities should you stop or do less of?
👉 To come up with lots of ideas, including wild and crazy ones, you can use idea generating techniques such as brainwriting and brainstorming. See Appendix A for some details on these techniques.
As a simple example, below are some ideas prompted by the design question: How can I get enough exercise every week?
2️⃣ Group similar ideas
The previous step has given you a large collection of ideas, stored electronically, on sticky notes or on cards. Some of these ideas will be similar, for example ideas to use your car less or exercise more.
Group similar ideas into themes and give each theme a brief description that captures the essence of the theme. For example, themes such as ‘Use my car less’ or ‘Exercise more’. Place ideas that do not fit within your themes in the 'Other' theme. If you come up with new ideas that can help you achieve your design goal, add these ideas to a corresponding theme. The grouping gives you a number of themes and associated ideas.
For the simple example, the diagram below shows a possible grouping.
Save your themes and associated ideas for future use electronically or by taking and saving a photo of them.
3️⃣ Reduce to about seven ideas
Life design is about taking action. The ideas you’ve produced will only deliver value if you select a few and take action on them.
The human mind can only effectively choose from a limited number of options. When you have too many options, you actually have no options at all, because you can't make a choice. Therefore, the first step in the selection process is to narrow your collection of ideas to about seven. You may feel resistance because you will have to say goodbye to many good ideas. But it has to be done. Comfort yourself with the thought that you will always have your saved copy to fall back on if you get stuck later in the process.
You can choose individual ideas from the themes, or you can include an entire theme as one idea. You then use the name of the theme as one idea, for example ‘Use my car less’.
You can select about seven ideas by selecting the ideas that appeal to you the most. Or you can delete all the ideas you least like until there are about seven left. Use your mind and your feelings when choosing: make sensible choices that do not go against your feelings.
You can use selection criteria such as how much an idea contributes to achieving your design goal (effectiveness), how easy it is for you to implement the idea (feasibility), or the possible positive side effects the idea has for yourself or your loved ones. Remember the 80/20 rule: 20% of the activities usually produce 80% of the desired results.
For the simple example, the selected ideas are surrounded by a red box in the diagram below.
4️⃣ Choose the three most promising ideas
Choose the three ideas (or less) that seem most promising to you to achieve your design goal. These are the ideas you will take action on.
You can select them in the same way as in the previous step: select the ideas that appeal to you the most, or delete the ideas that appeal to you the least. You can again use selection criteria such as effectiveness, feasibility, or possible positive side effects. Since there are only a few ideas left, you can also select them in a more structured way, for example using pairwise comparison or creating a decision matrix. Appendices B and C contain the details of these techniques.
If you’re working with a design team, you can have each team member divide ten points among the ideas and then take the three ideas that score the highest overall.
🖊️ After you’ve selected your three most promising ideas, write down your life path in the format: I'm going to <idea 1>, and <idea 2>, and <idea 3>.
This is the life path you are going to follow to achieve your design goal.
An example: I’m going to exercise while watching TV, swim twice a week and take the car less.
5️⃣ Keep your results
Keep everything you produced in this phase. If the information is on sticky notes or cards, take photos of your materials and save them. You may need these ideas again at some point, for example if you get stuck later in the process.
🎉👏🎈
Based on your design question ‘How can I <what you want to achieve>?’ you have determined a life path by selecting three ideas with which you think you can achieve your design goal. In the next phase of the life design process you are going to test these ideas to find out if they actually work for you: https://www.a3lifedesign.com/blog-english/test-your-chosen-path.
References
Designing Your Life, by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
Related life design blog posts
How to figure out your personal values, A3 Life Design, by Adrie Kuil,
https://www.a3lifedesign.com/blog-english/how-to-figure-out-your-personal-values
How to figure out what to do with your life, A3 Life Design, by Adrie Kuil,
https://www.a3lifedesign.com/blog-english/how-to-figure-out-what-to-do-with-your-life
Determine where you are now, A3 Life Design, by Adrie Kuil,
https://www.a3lifedesign.com/blog-english/determine-where-you-are-now
Determine where you want to go, A3 Life Design, by Adrie Kuil,
https://www.a3lifedesign.com/blog-english/determine-where-you-want-to-go
Appendix A – Brainwriting / Brainstorming
Brainwriting and brainstorming are techniques to generate many ideas. Brainwriting is done on your own, and brainstorming is done with a small group of people. Brainstorming is preferable because each group member brings a unique perspective, and interacting with others produces ideas that may not emerge when working alone.
The rules for brainwriting and brainstorming are:
👉 Don’t censor, judge or criticise. All ideas are welcome. The aim is to generate ideas, not shoot them down.
👉 Go for quantity over quality. More is better. The more ideas you generate, the more likely you are to come up with solutions that will help you achieve your design goal.
👉 Go for wild, crazy ideas to escape the limitations in your thinking. Assume that anything is possible because you have magical powers.
👉 When brainstorming, build on the ideas of others. This generates ideas that the participants would not have come up with on their own.
The goal is to generate as many ideas as possible for your design question: How can I <what you want to achieve>?
⚒️ Brainwriting
Get a pen and plenty of cards or sticky notes, or open an electronic document.
Set a minimum for the number of ideas to be produced, for example 50 or 100.
Remind yourself of the design question for which you are generating ideas.
Generate ideas quickly to avoid judgement and write down every idea that comes to mind (one idea per sticky note or card).
After each idea you write down, you can think or say: And what else?
Continue until you reach at least the minimum that you set.
⚒️ Brainstorming
Appoint a facilitator who prepares the brainstorming session and facilitates the process.
The facilitator ensures that there are sufficient pens and cards or sticky notes available.
At the start of the brainstorming session, the facilitator reminds the participants of the design question.
During the brainstorming session, participants take turns saying an idea out loud and writing it down.
Participants build on the ideas of others. They use the collective creativity of the group to generate ideas that no one can think of independently.
Brainstorm for 5 to 10 minutes.
At the end, the facilitator counts the number of ideas produced and reports this to the group.
Appendix B – Pairwise comparison
By comparing your ideas in pairs, you can determine your three most promising ideas based on your selection criteria. These criteria may include how much the idea contributes to achieving your design goal, how easy it is for you to implement the idea, or the possible positive side effects the idea has for yourself, your loved ones and others.
Write down your selected ideas in random order below each other and complete the following steps:
👉 Compare the idea in the first row of your list with the idea in the second row. Give one point to the idea that you think is most promising. You have to make a choice, you can't give half a point to both ideas. Do the same for the idea in the first row with the idea in the third row, then the first row with the fourth row, and so on until the first row with the last row.
👉 Compare the idea in the second row with the idea in the third row. Give one point to the idea that you think is most promising. Do the same for the idea in the second row with the idea in the fourth row, then the second row with the fifth row, and so on until the second row with the last row.
👉 Repeat this procedure with the third row, then the fourth row, and so on until the penultimate row.
👉 Count the total number of points for each idea.
👉 The ideas with the three highest scores are your three most promising ideas.
For the simple example in this blogpost, the below could be a result of the pairwise comparison.
Appendix C – Create a decision matrix
You can compare ideas using a decision matrix. The matrix has two axes that represent the two aspects on which you assess the ideas. For example, you can rate the ideas on feasibility (from low to high) and contribution to achieving your design goal (from low to high). Other possible aspects on which you can compare your ideas include positive side effects for yourself or others, cost, effort, consistency with your personal values, or attractiveness to you.
Draw up the matrix and start with the low ends in the bottom left corner of the matrix (see example below). Place each idea in the matrix at the spot where you think it should be. This allows you to immediately see which ideas are most likely to achieve your design goal. Choose the three ideas closest to the high ends in the upper right corner of the matrix.
For the simple example in this blogpost, the below could be a resulting decision table.