Agile Personal Development

OK, a little break from all the evaluations of personal development methods. Today marks about 6 weeks since I started this blog. This is an exciting milestone for me, so I thought I would share why I started this blog and the overall purpose.

First, I have always struggled with implementing the various personal development ideas I learn. I’ll read a great book, pull out some interesting ideas, and try to implement them. Then I’ll read another great idea on someone’s blog and struggle with how to combine the two different ideas into a comprehensive approach. This has gone on for years, with hundreds of different ideas. It was driving me nuts. I almost got to the point where I didn’t want to read anything more because it was so overwhelming. The problem is that there are some great blogs out there that I read daily, and I absolutely had to find a way to incorporate their ideas into my life.

Another key thing that happened was I ran across a Brazen Careerist blog post on starting your own blog. I really like Penelope’s ideas in that they make me think differently about balancing your life and career. Also, being in the Gen X crowd, her portrayal of my generation and how we feel about work/life balance is usually absolutely right on. One of her posts mentioned the importance of starting a blog, and referenced the post above. I knew that I wanted to get involved in this community, and try to contribute something unique from the millions of other people out there trying to do the same thing (but wait, I’ll do it differently!). What I was struggling with was what I would focus on.

The final thing that set everything into motion was a Wired article I read about David Allen and his “philosophy”. If you don’t know about his philosophy, then you probably ended up at this site completely by random, or this is your second day on the Internet. If so, he started a little something called Getting Things Done (one of the methods I still try to implement). The thing about this article that completely blew my mind was how it compared the GTD method to previous self-help methods like 7 Habits. Essentially, that GTD is a ‘bottoms up’ method, and that 7 Habits is a ‘top down’ approach. As I recovered from this incredible revelation, I realized that the key to leveraging all these great ideas was to develop some sort of framework that allowed for each of them to address their unique niche, but still be tied together into an overall comprehensive methodology.

I realized that I wanted to focus on developing a comprehensive methodology for developing and implementing your own personal development plan. I’d do the research and evaluation, pass along my thoughts to the world through my blog, all while putting some order into my own life. I went back to the Brazen Careerist post and tried to follow the suggestions. The one area I promptly failed on was ‘Post something right away’. Even though I wanted to get started, I also wanted to learn more about the details and make sure I was happy with the overall blog before I put it out to the world.

So, I spent the next 3 months (yes, not quite meeting the ’start blogging right away’ part of Penelope’s advice) learning about Wordpress, CSS, HTML, etc while tailoring my own blog design. I also spent a lot of time trying to come up with the right title. There are a lot of sites out there related to personal development - where did I want to focus? After reviewing about 200 different words that might be relevant, scrutinizing their meanings, putting them into different combinations, and finding out how the blog community viewed those words, I settled on Agile Personal Development. I ended up with the agile part towards the very end. I ran across the Agile Manifesto and related articles about this philosophy. I was already aware of it through my job (think of me as a Bill Lumbergh kind of guy), and what I really liked was doing quick studies of new methods, finding out what worked, and then ‘refactoring‘ my personal development plan to take advantage of the new idea. It really hit home that in the past, I have been trying to come up with the entire plan all at once, and then start implementing it. The problem was I could never get that total plan figured out, since my requirements kept changing. What I needed to do was start with an initial plan, try out new methods for implementing it, check on progress, revise the plan, and repeat. Call it a Spiral Personal Development Plan.

At this point, I’ve met Penelope’s rule of blogging for a month to make sure you’re serious about it. I’ve got a ton of ideas I want to try out, and I’m hoping over time you guys will provide even more. If you’re new to the site, check out the links across the top, particularly my current Agile Personal Development Methodology. Also, please leave some comments on areas you are interested in, tips on methods I should evaluate, or any ways you have been able to tie some of the key personal development methods together.

A few weeks ago, I identified 12 ways to develop your life list. Coincidentally, this is a hot topic right now with the movie Bucket List in theaters. If you’re looking for ways to develop your own “Bucket List”, I’ve put together a comprehensive guide on how to do it. This is based on my personal evaluations of 10 of the 12 ways to develop your life list. Here’s a brief summary of what I’ve learned:

• SuperViva. My first impressions were correct about SuperViva - this is a great site to get ideas for your goals, keep track of them, and even categorize them by different aspects of your life. It is easy to set up a free account and get started by looking at the different categories for ideas that others have and select those that you are interested in. You can also add notes to your goals (so you can remember a year from now why the heck you picked the goal) and you can even keep track of your completed goals. The other bonus is you get a weekly email with recent ideas that other users have added, and a reminder to go check out your list. Overall, this is a great site that I plan to use to track my life goals. You can check out my current list here.
• Life Tango. Initially I thought the brainstorming section would be really helpful. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out in practice. While it was really easy to write in your own goal, looking at other ideas for inspiration was difficult. Also, many of the goals that are listed by other users are worded too simplistically to be useful (e.g. “Japan” or “Travel”). Overall, this site isn’t worth it.
• My 50 Things to Do In A Lifetime. This site has a lot of great ideas to start your brainstorming. What I especially liked is their list of 50 suggestions for life goals. For each one, they have a detailed description of the goal, and why they think you should consider it. I thought almost half of them were worth adding to my list. They also have a lot more ideas within different categories of life (Travel and Holidays, Activities and Sport, Education and Learning, etc). to take a look at. If you like one, it is really easy to automatically add it to your list. The one downside of this site is that it is difficult to just randomly browse through other users’ goals. You need to search by keyword, which is hard if you are just trying to brainstorm. That said, this is a great site to get ideas.
• Day Zero. This site is more about trying to accomplish specific tasks within a 1001 day window (hopefully I have more than 1001 days to accomplish my life list, but you never know). I still plan to come back and check out this site when I get down to specific near term actions.
• John Goddard’s Life List. If you are going to read anyone’s life list for inspiration, this is the one. Most of his goals are very adventurous (in more way than one), but the fact that he has completed so many of them is amazing. Definitely a great place to start.
• 43 Things. This site is well known for identifying the key items you want to accomplish in life. I looked through the different categories of goals of other users, and picked a few extra ideas. Nothing all that unique, but it is another place to look.
• 1000 Places to See Before You Die. This book is definitely useful for identifying places to see in the world. However, there are so many places it is overwhelming to really figure out what you want to see. This book is probably best used to identify specific places within a location once you decide on your top countries/regions etc that you want to travel to. For example, if you really want to go to Australia, you can use the book to find out what to see while you are there. Or, if you are a world traveler already and have seen most of the major places the rest of us travel-challenged people want to see first, you can find some unique places to add to your life list. I wouldn’t run out and buy this book just to help develop your life list (but it is a good reference for where to take next year’s vacation).
• Smithsonian Magazine’s Life List. This was a really great source of ideas for places to see. There is a little blurb on why you should check out a specific location. Definitely worth a look for getting some ideas.
• Your 100 Things. I did get a few ideas from other user’s lists for this site. There are good categories to choose from, but it is a little hard to read the ideas easily. I’d suggest passing on this site unless you really are desperate for more ideas.
• Men’s Journal Method. This was the original article (a couple of years old) that introduced me to life lists. I really enjoyed it at the time. Unfortunately, it isn’t *officially* on-line (although a Google search may turn something up), so it isn’t that useful today. You can probably get the same information from the other sources I’ve listed here.
• Success Begins Today Method. This method involves answering some open-ended questions regarding your life (what 5 things do you want to accomplish, what 5 things to you want to achieve, etc). For me, this was a good follow-up to brainstorming by looking at ideas for inspiration. It forced me to really think about what I wanted out of life. However, I would have a hard time starting with this method - I need to look at other ideas first.
• No Opportunity Wasted. I haven’t had a chance to read this book so can’t comment. From the description, it seems like a collection of stories of other people’s goals and how they have achieved them. Some of them have gone to great lengths to make this happen.

Lessons Learned

As I tried out these various methods, I learned a few things to consider when developing a life list.

1. Looking over other people’s goals is great inspiration, especially for identifying what you *don’t* want to do in life
2. Some life list goals are ongoing (e.g. see a sunset once a year), others are one time events (e.g. go on a safari). You need to consider both types.
3. Consider adding a goal to complete things on a separate list (e.g. visit all National Parks). This keeps your life list a little cleaner and easier to focus on the big picture.
4. For each goal, add a short description and explanation of why you picked it
5. Looking at other people’s goals for inspiration is great, but it should be balanced with asking yourself specific questions about what you want out of life. It is your life list after all!

Recommended Approach

Here is my 5 step guide to developing your life list:

1. Set up an account at SuperViva for collecting your life goals
2. Review the goals within the different categories and select those that interest you (don’t worry if they aren’t exactly worded right - you can modify later)
3. Visit the following websites for more ideas and add them to your SuperViva life list (paste them in as a full list) - John Goddard’s Life List, My50.com, and Smithsonian Magazine’s list of 28 places to see
4. Work through the Life Goals worksheet from Success Begins Today to help identify other areas you haven’t thought about and add to your list
5. Finalize your list - remove duplicates, merge those that are similar and move those that aren’t ready for primetime to the ‘Backburner’ to think about later.
6. Go live your life! [I'll be evaluating methods for developing a specific strategy to implement your goals in future posts - so subscribe to the feed if you're interested]

There are a number of methods for developing your life list (see previous posts for my evaluations of 10 of them). After going through these methods, you’ll likely have a huge number of goals, making it virtually impossible to put together a plan to achieve them. Many of the goals are likely “tactically” focused, having to do with day to day goals, not life goals. There may be others not worded with enough clarity as to the real objective. You’ll need to to consolidate, evaluate, and refine your list. For me, I ended up with almost 250 goals after following the different methods - I definitely needed to refine them to keep my sanity (at least what sanity I still have).

I recommend this simple 5 step process for finalizing your life list.

1) Consolidate goals into one location for evaluation. As mentioned previously, I really like the SuperViva website, so I recommend using it for putting all your goals into one place. Use the SuperLister feature for adding a lot of goals at one time. Just paste in text of your goals, the site automatically creates separate goals, and lets you edit them before you officially add them to your list. Wow! Cool feature! The downside is trying to get your goals off of other websites. There isn’t always an easy way to export them. Just cut and paste from the site into a text editor, do some minor editing, and paste them into SuperLister.

2) Group goals by category for easier refining. Group the goals you are uploading (or already have on SuperViva) into appropriate categories for your life. For example, I used the following: Continuous Learning, Travel, Career, Family, Health/Fitness, Personal Finance, Relationships/Community, Entertainment and Unique Experiences.

As you group your goals, you will likely find that you need to refine your category definitions. I modified the Continuous Learning category to include experiencing new things, like sampling new food or trying a new activity like mountain climbing. I also wondered where to put my ‘be creative’ goal. My answer was to think of Health / Fitness as including mental health as well as physical health, so ‘be creative’ and ‘take time for myself’ fell into that category. The Career category was where I put ‘take a sabbatical’ and ’start my own business’. I also expanded my Travel category to include doing activities that normally would require travel, even if they weren’t at a specific location (e.g. taking pictures of sunsets since I don’t live at the beach - bummer!).

NOTE: This is a good time to backup your online goals. Export your goals from the site. It would be pretty rough if you lose everything - you would end up wandering aimlessly the rest of your life, with no goals to achieve!

2) Remove duplicates and merge specific goals. If you follow my recommendation of using different websites and existing lists for brainstorming ideas, you’ll likely end up with duplicate goals, and some goals that are similar to others. Delete the duplicates and reword the similar goals into just one.

3) Put goals that don’t quite fit on the Backburner. Another feature I really like about SuperViva is that you can move goals to a ‘Backburner’ list. This is very useful as you narrow your goals down. If there is a goal that doesn’t belong as a primary goal, but you still want incorporate it into your life somehow, move it to the Backburner section. This allows you to concentrate on the primary goals without giving up on your secondary goals. You can come back to them later when you establish the plan to achieve your goals.

4) Get Rid of Non-Specific Goals in Favor of Specific Goals. You’ll likely come up with goals that aren’t really specific enough to achieve (e.g. learn something new). Delete these, particularly when you have more specific goals that are similar (e.g. learn how to sketch). Keep specific travel experiences and delete the general ‘Visit Here’ goals. For example, delete ‘Visit Australia’ if you already have ‘Visit Sydney and Harbour Bridge’ or ‘Visit Great Barrier Reef’.

5) Move subsets of primary goals onto the Backburner. Some of your goals will be a one time life experience (e.g. watch a space shuttle launch, climb a mountain), others will be general life goals that will require a more detailed plan to achieve (e.g. maintain a fit and healthy lifestyle). Goals like ‘visit the doctor and dentist regularly’ or ‘exercise 3-5 times a week’ are all part of meeting this goal, so move them to the Backburner.

Another example are goals that will be completed when another goal is achieved. ‘Explore Anasazi ruins at Mesa Verde’ will be completed once you ‘visit all National Parks’. Make a note under the ‘visit all National Parks’ goal to ensure Mesa Verde National Park is one of the top priorities, and remove the specific Mesa Verde goal from the list.

Following this process, I went from almost 250 goals to a manageable 84 goals with another 40+ goals on the Backburner list. I still have some fine-tuning to go, but the 84 goals seem like a great start.

Anyone have other ideas on how you have fine-tuned your life list?