photo by Nicholas Swanson

Planning Life When You Don’t Know What to Plan

By Anton Kulik

If you are ambitious enough to wish to leave a trace in history, it’s important to have a plan. A clear vision of future for 10–5–3–1 years to understand where do you want to be and whom do you want to become.

There is a usual problem facing young people, who discover that idea — they often can’t imagine their life in 3 years, not to mention about 10 years.

In my eyes, there are two key paradigms of planning your life: top-down planning and bottom-up one. The first one is focused on planning your longterm goals and the second one fits needs of people who can’t see their lives in 5 or 10 years.

Top-down Paradigm

Top-down planning algorithm looks like this:

1. Write down a picture of your ideal life after 10 years.
2. Try to understand what should you do in next 5 years, so you can reach your 10-years-goal. What skills do you need to get? What experience? What people?
3. Repeat the same thing you’ve done with a 10-years-goal with a 5-years one. So you need to understand what do you have to achieve in a year.
4. Plan that month, that week and that day, basing on your long term plans.
5. Work hard, don’t forget about family and friends.

There is a lot of planning systems like e.g. GTD you can use. Find something that fits your lifestyle and implement it.

But if you try to choose a path for next 10 years, you definitely need to know something about the world around you and about yourself. It’s important to understand your values, priorities, talents, and skills. You need to try yourself in different roles and industries, just basics. Without that experience, you never can choose a 10-year plan, that will inspire you.

Because of this conflict, a lot of people do not think about their life’s strategy. And here comes a bottom-up paradigm.

Bottom-up Paradigm

So when you do not have enough experience and self-understanding, your winning strategy would be, probably, becoming, as I call it, an experience hunter.

Your key goal is to find out fast:

• personal values;
• strengths and weaknesses;
• your working style;
• what roles and what industries are you interested in.

Also, try to meet every person on events you visit. Build a strong network. Spend your time with people you like and who can teach you something great. Read good books, blogs and media. Watch good films and video-lectures on your topics.

You need to work on opportunities, that provide you the best skills, people, mentors and experience for exactly now.

This concept is common to Paul Graham’s idea from his essay for high school students. He calls it ‘Stay Upwind’ rule.

Then, when you have an experience of 5–7 projects, you also have a great social fundament, a brief self-understanding in work-process, a more clear picture of your values and desires. So now you can see your goal for next 10 years and plan accurately.

Best tactics for experience hunters

1. Communication with amazing people.
2. College projects.
3. Startups.
4. Internships.
5. Interest Clubs.
6. Books, blogs, media.
7. Writing columns for a media or your personal blog.
8. Events and conferences.
9. Traveling.
10. Youth organizations: AIESEC and so on.