A Community Contribution by Arif and Ali Vakil
Photo: I recently heard Steve Pavlina’s podcast “What is your Purpose”, in which he presented an excellent framework for arriving at your specific purpose. This ties in very well with GTD’s 40,000 ft horizon of focus and also a continuation of my previous post “GTD @ 50,000: How to find and fulfill your life’s purpose“.
At 50,000 ft you’re clarifying ‘what’ your set of values are and clarifying the ultimate purpose of why you exist.
At 40,000 ft you have to take your values and use them as a basis to craft a vision. Your vision manifests your purpose into real life goals of ‘how’ you want your life to be.
In this post I’ll be showing you how you can craft a comprehensive vision that covers all major aspects of your life (Body, Mind, Heart & Spirit) to make yourself a complete a human being.
The Four Questions
* Body: What are my material needs?
The answer to this question should cover the details of what kind of lifestyle you would like to live. This would include the money you like to earn per month. What sort of house would you like to live in? etc
* Mind: What am I capable of doing?
Address your core skills. Every human being is endowed with certain skills, or interests that help to develop those skills. List out the things you are best at doing.
* Heart: What do I want do do?
Where are your dreams? Where does your passion lie?
* Spirit: What should I be doing?
Based on your beliefs & values, what is your conscience telling you that you should be doing?
Score Card
The answers you get to the above questions will be ‘areas of activities’. Jot these down under the activities column and score each of them from 1 to 10, as to how much they address the needs of your Body, Mind, Heart and Spirit.
Matrix
| Activities | Body | Mind | Heart | Spirit | Total |
| XXX | |||||
| XXX | |||||
| XXX | |||||
| XXX |
Once you’ve totaled the value each activity is giving you, you’ll intuitively be able to see which activity will give you most balance in your life. This will help you to see very clearly what your 40,000 ft vision needs to be, and based on this you can derive specific measurable goals for the 30,000ft horizon.
Advantages of having a Vision
* Clear direction of where you’re heading
* Clarity whether your next actions align with your Vision
* Feel Motivated
* High Energy
* Feel inspired
* Ability to Focus
Have you crafted your vision @ the 40,000ft Horizon of Focus? Please share any tips below for GTDtimes readers.
Very good presentation of life planning. I really wish I had this type of knowledge 25 years ago.
You have done a very good job of not only clearing a path to help one set the vision of what they would like to accomplish but to help insure those goals are in line with the individual.
Now waiting for the pilot to announce we are descending to 30,000 feet.
-Stephen
Hi Stephen,
Thanks for your encouraging feedback. I’m approaching 30,000ft. 🙂
Mohammed Ali
Very valuable framework. Thank you!