Visioning My Future - A Tactical and Practical Guide for the Next 12 Months

Happy New Year!

It’s January 1, 2016- and I am thinking about how this upcoming year will unfold and what I want it to hold. This post outlines my process for planning out five years and tactics for 2015. Ever since 1982 with Shakti Gawain’s Creating Visualization as a guide, I’ve spent time on (or around) New Years day alone or sometimes with friends creating a vision for the year.  I've collected them in journals, on legal pads and on poster, foam core and cork-boards. Sometimes they’ve been built with pen and ink bullets, photos, collage-style and personal sketches. 

This year, a new chapter in my life is manifesting. I see a future that is shorter than the years I’ve already lived and I recognize there are things I want to do that I must initiate soon to see to fruition, or develop competence to leave a legacy. I am aware that this shift encompasses all aspects of my life as I now live it, including career.

Career for me is about accomplishment, social interaction, contribution, competence, livelihood and creativity. In other words, no matter if I was entry level, the boss, the owner, in subservient or leadership positions, there is value for me in  work… most of the time. Overcoming obstacles, dealing with stress, inventing ideas and processes, making connections… every experience enhances my life in and outside of work.

Like squeezing a balloon, I feel less pressure for building career and more on creating a life and legacy beyond employed work. I can’t ignore the building pressure.

As a first and most concrete step to reduce the tension, beginning January 5^th, I arranged to work only four days a week, creating an entire day to use in development of this new lifestyle. In addition, because of circumstances regarding space where I work, I gave up my office for a hotel space and will work 2-3 days a week from home; giving me an extra 4-6 hours every week for use as I see fit. Though the loss of the day also means a 20% cut in salary and vacation time, it’s a cost well spent.

With the New Year and new life immediate, it’s imperative I initiate a visioning process that provides direction for both.  Age, retirement and sense of purpose are driving the need for me to work on this. I’ve devised an outline that I thought might be helpful to others who are intentionally defining their future and tactically designing the next twelve months to work toward achieving the future.

Visioning My Future - A Tactical and Practical Guide for the Next 12 Months to Achieve It 

The goal of this process is to establish a dynamic vision of the future – for now, about five years out – 2020 and identify the items I need to accomplish this year to achieve the vision or redefine it.

Currently, rather than the boards I mentioned above, I'm working in a 14”x17” spiral sketchbook that I found in my closet with seven pages of sketches done in 1999. I like the spiral notebook because it opens flat and works as a single page or an extra large spread across both pages. A smaller sketchbook could be used too. I found from my work in creativity and innovation and as a visual person, I learned that I like to cut pictures and headlines and develop a collage to capture the essence of the vision. The process of looking through magazines helps me identify motifs and themes. The process also allows me to see how much of what attracts or interests me is omnipresent in the media and should be considered suspect of my true interest. Besides the pictures, I add my own sketches and notes, and sometime stamps and ink.

Beginning today, I am spending time setting up the book and filling in my top-of-mind ideas. In the next few days, I will build out the vision of the future. I know there are things to create in my life and others to leave behind. I will use the book to capture evidence of things I do through out the year that enable the future to emerge… like ticket stubs, photos or notes.  For example, I joined a new health club and went for the first time yesterday. I will affix the club’s name to the pages to show evidence of two goals in 2015: to ensure I have a social connection as I begin my more isolating work schedule; and preparation for a lengthy bike ride with my bike-riding friend, Nancy next summer. I can imagine writing in words or even glimmers of ideas. The book will become a scrapbook, calendar and soothsayer.

Here is the outline I am using. It is loosely based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs which is a simple and elegant way of encompassing most of the areas I consider. I’ve tried to apply other organizational structures, like the dimensions of wellness (Physical, Social, Spiritual, Emotional, Vocational, Environmental and Intellectual) but Maslow's structure, for me takes each dimension a step further suggesting less overlap and confusion. If you want more here is a post from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs.

Visioning My Future

(In the parenthesis below, I sprinkled notes to give you a sense of how I think about some of these. They aren't meant for you to use)

• 2-page spread [  |  ]  for 5 years from now - Visioning My Future 2020
• 1 page for Existence Needs covering: [ |
• Air (Don't really need to say a lot about this, unless you live in a highly polluted area; or you want to support efforts to improve air standards and reduce climate change)
• Water 
• Shelter (This is a big unknown for me, as I struggle with the question where and how I want to live in retirement - should I buy a cabin, land, place in the city now while I have an income to show a mortgage company?)
• Clothing

•   1 page for Safety and Security | ]

• Personal security
• Financial security (I might make a separate page just for this one as it is the big mother of all my issues)
• Health and wellbeing
• Safety net against disaster and disease

•   2 page spread for Growth  [  |  ]  

• Love and Belonging
• Friendship/Social Groups
• Intimacy (I'm continue to look for this)
• Family (What about a dog?)
• Esteem 
• Need to feel respected by self and others 
• Acceptance and valued
• Sense of contribution from work or hobby 
• Gaining an inner competence through experience - of strength, competence, mastery, self-confidence, independence, and freedom
• Self Actualization
• Identifying and realizing one's full potential (How does work fit into this?)
• Accomplishing everything one can, to be the most one can be athletically, or be an ideal parent
• Expression of self (painting, inventions)
• Self Transcendence 
• The self only finds its actualization in giving itself to some higher goal outside oneself
• Altruism 
• Spirituality
• 1 or more pages on a year in my life in the future state (how many trips, classes and pages written or paintings painted)
• 1 or more pages on a day in my life (What do I want my day to contain?)
• 2 or more page spread on 2015 - what I want for this year that also helps me evolve to 2020. 

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If you are doing planning in any form, please let me know your process and how it’s going.

This post is reposted from 2015.