The Two Kinds of Work Required to Craft a Well-Lived Life
What I’ve Learnt About The Tension Between Creativity and Good Organisation
What Is The Well-Lived Life?
This is how I define a Well-Lived Life. Your definition will of course be different.
1. You are fulfilled with no more than your fair share of disappointments.
2. You are happy, experiencing many more sunlit uplands than dark valleys.
3. Your days are filled with good intentions which you work on with integrity.
4. Your wisdom steadily accumulates.
5. You optimise your inherent talents.
6. You find increased equanimity.
7. Your mindful awareness grows.
8. You have as much health and well-being as your genes and environment permits.
9. You have loving relationships and deep friendships.
10. You have financial, physical and emotional security.
11. You creatively add to what the world knows.
The Question
Given a set of genes and the limitations of your mind, what can you do to increase the likelihood of crafting a Well-Lived Life?
Two Kinds of Work
In the Better Creativity Digital Garden (it’s more of a Building Site, in fact) I’m exploring the interface between creativity and good organisation. The more I think about the inherent tension between the two states, creativity on the one hand and good organisation on the other, the more it seems there are two kinds of work that are important.
- Goal-Oriented Work
- Wisdom-Oriented Work
1. Goal-Oriented Work
Although everyone will have their own definition, a Well-Lived Life will for most contain an element of aspiration, something in the future you want to achieve.
- Become successful in your career
- Be financially secure
- Publish another book and so on.
Goals are useful, particularly if they inspire you to take action. I use three criteria when first thinking about and then writing down my goals:
- The goal must excite me when I think about a future when the goal is accomplished.
- The goal should make me a better, happier and more contented person.
- The goal, when achieved, will make me proud of myself down the line.
Goals are the fundamental building blocks of my Total Life Plan. They provide the directional setting, a compass bearing for what I choose to do each day.
When I write my goals down, I choose language that will inspire me. Compare these two statements and notice the difference in energy they convey:
- Be more successful at work.
- Fulfil my dream of running my own company delivering services I’m passionate about and enjoy the thrill of making decisions that I alone am accountable for that will make a positive impact on the lives of other.
The second statement is much more specific, and uses high energy words like ‘passionate’, ‘thrill’ and ‘positive impact’.
To make progress on my goals, I remind myself of my goals each day when I open my Daily Note in Obsidian. I use templates a lot which provide guard rails for thinking. I use a Daily Note Template which contains an embedded link of my active goals (see below).
You see the exclamation mark at the top of the page next to ‘🎯 My Active Goals’?
That pulls in my current active goals, so I am reminded of them each time I go to my Daily Note.
Pulling in my active goals this way makes it easier to work on my intentions. I like using intentions as they remind me that achieving my goals requires some personal integrity. Each day I review how well I’ve lived up to my intentions.
Complice, a goal planning application uses intentions a lot. I think they have some good ideas and you can read about their philosophy here.
I use the Tracker Plugin in Obsidian to see how consistent and effective I’ve been with my intentions over time, an idea I got from Mike Schmidt from the Sweet Setup. This plugin creates graphs that plot the score I give myself each day based on how well I’ve lived up to my intentions. I can tell when I’m slacking with an intention when I do a monthly check-in with myself.
Working on your goals, focusing each day on your intentions, feels much more inspiring to me than listing out all the jobs I’ve got to do.
I still have lists of todos, but that’s no longer my dominant planning activity.
2. Wisdom-Oriented Work
If Goals and Goal-Oriented Work are about the destination, then Wisdom Oriented Work is about the journey.
You can deepen the quality of your experience even while you travel towards your Goals by undertaking Wisdom-Oriented Work.
What is Wisdom Oreinted Work?
I will never know everything there is to know in the world. Although I read widely and enjoy many different experiences in my life, there will always be so much that is beyond my reach.
Rather than striving for variety and breadth as a goal, I have decided to focus my attention on a narrower, but still quite diverse range of interests.
This is about reducing distractions as much as it is about my own limitations.
I have defined a number of Areas of Interest. I have two main categories:
- Creative
- Personal Growth
These are some of my Creative Areas of Interest:
- Poetry writing techniques and form
- Creative writing, particularly long-form story telling
- Filming and photographing birds
- Landscape photography
In each of these Creative Areas of Interest, I want to build my expertise and knowledge. When I do, I will have added depth and quality to my creative work.
These are some of my Personal Growth Areas of Interest:
- Become more mindful
- Build increased contentment and happiness
- Stay Healthy and strong
Each of these Personal Growth Areas of Interest enrich my day to day experience of life. They deepen my appreciation and equip me with a broader range of attributes that I bring to my creative work.
I will less be distracted and better equipped to focus on what I’m trying to do with my creative output if I undertake this Wisdom-Oriented Work.
In Summary
If you want to craft a Well-Lived Life, one you’ve defined in your own terms, then you should consider undertaking both Goal and Wisdom-Oriented Work.
You can help make this easier to achieve by building a series of templates and routines that will help direct your thinking, easing the cognitive load that takes and freeing up mental resources for more creative activities.
