I think that I am one incredibly anal chap! My wife may well agree. A reason why this may be so, is because I am writing a business plan for my life. I call it a life plan and yet I am having difficulty in planning exactly what is going to happen in the next couple of months. I suppose the idea is that I want to provide myself with a framework for my life over the next couple of years to ensure that I am focused on this new found knowledge of self. I would consider myself to have failed if I end up in a position when I am having plenty of fun or making plenty of bucks yet not achieving what I set out to do, which is to live a worthwhile life.

For this reason I have embarked on this anal project of a life plan. I have seen many businesses fail due to their lack of clear direction. I think that the converse could also apply in my personal life – having a business plan for my life must give me a better chance of success. One of the things that has always amazed me is that there are so many clever tools and processes that we all use at work and never think to apply to the businesses that are our lives. Watch this space and see if I can get them to work for me…..

My life plan includes all of those thoughts that I have had over the past months on how I can possibly rebuild my life in a way that gives priority to my family, spirituality and health. Obviously I have no way of knowing if any of this will work for me and so I have tried to include all sorts of ideas. Here is a basic cause and effect diagram :

I have also created a causal loop diagram. The idea behind this clever graphic is to better understand how the various key variables in my life impact on one another. I don’t think that this is 100% correct but it does allow me to understand all of the different points of stress in my life that I may target in order to change the outcome – an improved quality of life. I think it is pretty neat – this may be because I just like to think in pictures!!

By now you probably agree with my wife!!! Hopefully all of this thinking work will help and guide me through this period of wandering and keep me focussed on my life's new mission. Either that or waste some serious colour ink in the printer!!