Last year I wrote a few posts on the topic of Life Design. This is something that I continue to think about, as well as talk to others about. Coming into the new year, I thought about how it could impact goal setting. I picked up the book Living Forward, by Michael Hyatt and Daniel Harkavy. It was a book that I had owned for quite some time, but I had never read it. While reading it I came across an idea that has really helped me launch into the new year.
The book encourages you to look at the different life accounts that you have, and to think about them the way you would a bank account. With a bank account, it’s easy to see whether or not it’s healthy. Is there ample money there? Are you getting close to being overdrawn? Our lives are much more tricky.
The book suggests nine life accounts, with three sets of three. There is the Circle of Being, which contains the accounts Spiritual, Intellectual, and Physical. There is the Circle of Relating, which contains the accounts Marital, Parental, and Social. And there is the Circle of Doing, which contains the accounts Vocational, Avocational, and Financial. The authors encourage you to select that accounts that fit your life. These fit me, so I went with them.
I started by going through each account and assessing my current reality. Which accounts were healthy? Which were depleted? I gave each of the nine accounts a number score from 1 (overdrawn) to 10 (healthy). This then showed me where I needed to put in some work, which leads to goal setting. What were tangible action steps that I could take that would cause these scores to rise?
I can’t tell you how helpful this exercise was for me. When thinking about goals, I went back to the 12 Week Year. Instead of thinking about annual goals, I think about the next twelve weeks. That’s my year. I set goals for each of the nine accounts. As of today I’m about a quarter of the way through my first year, and I’m really happy with where I’m at.