A few months ago I was listening to a BiggerPockets podcast featuring Tarl Yarber. It was a great podcast for a number of reasons, but there was one line in it that stood out most. He was quoting a friend of his (Thatch Nguyen) when he said, “Most people build their business and then work to fit their life into it. Instead, why don’t you decide what kind of life you want to live, and then design your business to fit that lifestyle?”
Mic drop
I realized in that moment that I so resonated with this statement because it’s something I’ve been attempting to do for the last few years. I just didn’t have to vocabulary yet to describe it.
I first started thinking about life design a few years ago when I was debating stepping down as pastor of the church I had started a decade earlier. This was a difficult decision, but I knew that I wasn’t the healthiest version of myself. I was doing too much, and I was burned out. At the time I was making the decision, Adam was getting ready to enter the 8th grade, and I knew that I had five years before he went to college. I recognized that these last five years are pretty crucial, and I therefore knew that it was pretty crucial that I be healthy. I didn’t want to be a spectator for these years. I wanted to be present and active. Right then and there, I knew that my primary focus needed to be on my family.
This realization then caused me to ask the question, “So what do I want these five years to look like?” But I then recognized that there’s another question to ask before I asked this one? It’s this: “What do my sons need from me before they leave my house?” That’s a big question, and one that I needed to spend some time with.
At the end of the day, I thought about things in terms of time. Five years would pass quickly. And then another four would pass and Micah would be in college. Time was the most precious commodity. And I thought about time in terms of both quantity and quality. Both are important. When it comes to quality, it was less about me planning creative things for my kids and more about me being healthy so that I could give my best, not simply my left-overs. And side note…when it comes to quantity, I’m reminded that this pandemic has given me SO much more time with family than I could have ever planned for. And though at times this has been challenging, I’m very grateful for it.
I knew that I needed to spend some time developing a vision for my life. We are all taught to develop a vision for our business or organization, but rarely do we spend time developing one for our personal lives. How strange that is when you really think about it!
All of this thinking then led to a series of questions (side note – I love questions, as I find that one question leads to another question, often a deeper and more important question):
- What does the culture say leads to happiness/prosperity? In what ways do I agree with this, and in what ways do I disagree?
- What does a happy/successful/content/prosperous life look like?
- If I had all the time in the world, how would I spend it?
- Which is more important to me: more time or more money?
- What does our family enjoy doing?
- How much money do I need to make each year?
- How many hours do I need to work in order to make that much money?
- What does my ideal week look like?
- Since Mandy has a more traditional work schedule, what is the value of a flexible schedule?
- What makes me happy?
It’s been almost two and a half years since I made the difficult decision to leave vocational ministry. More than anything else, this was a life design decision. In order for my life to work the way I wanted it to work, I had to give some things up. This was one of them. As hard as it was to quit doing something that I had spent the previous two decades doing (and planning to do), it was the right decision. Asking these questions, and then making this decision, has led to a different kind of life. Stress has been at an all time low these last two years, I’ve recovered from burnout, and as a result I’m a healthier me.
Besides being more present for my family, I’ve also seen my business prosper as a result. And it wasn’t just about having more time. It was also about having more mental and emotional margin. I’ve written about this before, but I will say it again: margin often means that I see and take hold of opportunities that could be easily missed if it weren’t there.
Over the coming weeks I’m going to write at least a couple more posts dealing with what I’ve been learning about life design.
Pt. 2: Rest and Responsibility
Pt. 3: Scaling vs. Simplicity
Pt. 4: Life Design – a theological perspective