Your Dream Life Roadmap

Creating and achieving your dream life roadmap is pretty simple:

1. Know what you want
2. Understand what it takes
3. Do the work. Day in. Day out.

The problem is, Simple isn’t Easy for most of us.

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

– Jim Rohn

Luckily, once you know what you want to do, there are a lot of ways you can build your roadmap.

The important thing for you to remember is a Crap Map is Better Than No Map.

Here are the methods we’re going to take you through:

1. Ikigai
2. North Star
3. 5 Year Plans
4. SMART Goals
5. The 80 | 20 Rule
6. Value-Based Planning
7. Begin with the End in Mind

These methods do not need to be mutually exclusive and you should pick and choose elements from each and every one of them, which is what I’ll do and I’ll talk you through how I do this.

Ikigai

This is a good place to start because it’s less about how you build your Life Roadmap and more about how you determine what you want to build the Roadmap to achieve.

Ikigai is a Japanese concept and is meant to help you find your purpose in life to create a life aligned with your values. It is the intersection of what:

1. You Love
2. You’re Good At
3. The World Needs
4. You Can Get Paid For

Once you know your Ikigai, you can use it to set your goals and live your purpose.

Surround yourself with friends and family who support your Ikigai and help you on your journey to achieve it.

My Ikigai is to help people:

1. Be Better
2. Achieve More
3. Become Financially Free

North Star

Start with your values.

Use your values and your Ikigai to define your purpose.

Once you know your Ikigai and purpose, use them to create a vision of exactly what you want your life to look like – that is your North Star.

Your days, weeks, months and years should be guided by your North Star, which you can always be marching to.

The benefit of the North Star Approach is you can refine your North Star as you move through life.

As you get closer to your North Star, you can let it stretch out further on the horizon.

Focus on the journey toward it and celebrate the small wins while stretching.

My current North Star is to help 1 Billion People Grow: Personally, Professionally and Financially.

5 Year Plans

This has been my Holy Grail when combined with certain of these other steps, which we’ll discuss below.

A 5-Year Plan is far enough in the future that you can build a Life Roadmap that involves exponential thinking and it’s close enough in the future that it isn’t hazy.

Bill Gates said most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years. While ten years allows you to achieve your wildest dreams, it’s a horizon that’s too far in the future for the average person to plan.

1. Visualize where you want to be in 5 Years
2. Break down your 5-year plan into achievable steps [Begin With the End in Mind]
3. Set Smart Goals to achieve each year – [Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Bound]
4. Determine what roadblocks are in your way, what education you’ll need and what resources will help you succeed

Every year, revisit your 5-Year Plan and determine whether it’s still applicable or whether you need to re-adjust.

SMART Goals

SMART Goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.

Specific

Your goals need to be specific, clear and well defined.

For example, instead of I want to lose weight you should say I want to lose 10 pounds in the next 3 months.

Measurable

You need to make sure you can measure your goals.

With a specific goal of losing 10 pounds in the next 3 months, you can weigh yourself each day and have a specific weight target each day.

Achievable

The goal has to be achievable.

For example, a goal to lose 100 pounds in 3 months wouldn’t be reasonable.

Instead, you could target losing 1-2 pounds per week by reducing your calories by 500 each day and increasing physical activity.

Relevant

Why do you want to achieve the goal.

How does it tie into your 5-year plan, Ikigai or North Star.

If the goal isn’t relevant to what you want to achieve in life, you’re less likely to do it.

Time-bound

The time bound is key.

If you don’t bind it with time, how will you achieve it.

If you don’t bind it with time, how will you even measure it.

The 80 | 20 Rule

The 80 | 20 Rule is also called the Pareto Principle.

It states that 80% of your results are driven by 20% of your activities.

When you focus on the most important tasks, you’ll be able to achieve greater results with less efforts.

This is why I say that you can do the following and still be a millionaire:

1. Drink Starbucks
2. Eat Avocado Toast
3. Watch your Netflix shows
4. Not wake up at 5:00 in the morning

You can do this if you move the needle by focusing on the right activities when you aren’t doing these things.

You’re only going to be focused on the right 20% activities when you’ve followed one of the methods above or below here.

Value-Based Planning

This is how it all works.

First, determine your values.

When you know your values, define your purpose.

When you have a purpose, use it to create a 5-year plan and determine your North Star.

Once you’re done these steps, all that’s going to be left is to do the work. Day in. Day out. And, that’s something you can do.

Begin with the End in Mind

Regardless of what method you choose, bring it back to this.

When you begin with the end in mind, your goal is to bring it back to today.

Whether it’s your North Star, Ikigai or 5-year plan, you know where you want to be in the future and:

1. Break it down to years
2. Reduce to quarters
3. Down to months
4. Cut to weeks
5. Then days
6. Habits

Your goal is to get to habits.

In this respect, your habits determine your future.

When you combine this with the Pareto Principle [80 | 20 Rule], you’ll focus on the right habits to ultimately get to your goal.

 
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