Monday Seven No. 024
How to get what you want out of life
Hey Friends 👋🏽
Welcome to Monday Seven, where I discuss and share random topics that interested me. For those of you new here you can read previous editions and subscribe here.
The last edition had a 54% open rate. Top links were No Small Talk Cards and my 2017 article How Being a Refugee Prepared me for Life as an Entrepreneur.
I’d like to share one of the most profound exercises that have helped me work towards the life I want—a visioning exercise I call a Life Map.
A Life Map is a long-form essay you write yourself after peering into your future in 3, 5, or 10 years from now. It’s a lot of fun and I’m excited to share my process with you.
Creating a Life Map has helped me get the most out of my life, gain clarity on what I really want, and find meaningful direction on where I am headed.
This is my longest post yet so I’ll spare you the long preamble.
Let’s get just into it!
No. 024
1 — Preparing to create your Life Map
Creating a Life Map is an exercise in self-love.
If you truly love yourself, then you also care about your future-self. You’ll want to do everything you can today so that your future-self can live a truly fulfilled life.
I like to prepare for the Life Map exercise by priming the body and mind. By placing ourselves in a primed state, we tap into the self-love we need to create our Life Map.
GET AWAY AND GO ALONE
Creating a Life Map is best done over a weekend getaway*. The important thing is to remove yourself from your day-to-day environment. You need mental clarity to project a vision of yourself into the future. Creating a Life Map is time travel. You need to be in the right mind frame for the journey ahead.
I recommend doing this exercise alone. You want to be secluded, free of distractions.
WHAT TO BRING, WHAT NOT TO BRING
Don’t bring a laptop. Forget about TV. No electronics. Music is fine but keep it to ambient sounds or minimal lyrics. You want to avoid triggering any associations.
Turn off your phone and put it out of reach. It should take you more than 15 seconds to retrieve your phone. Don’t rely on your willpower. Rather, set up your environment to be conducive to the behavior you’re after.
No alcohol, no drugs. Don’t bring a book. You want a totally clear mind.
I recommend only bringing a pen, notebook, and some food.
You’ll want to unwind from the day-to-day. I recommend going up on a Friday after work. Take the night to have a quiet dinner alone. If you’re bored, that’s fine. You are allowed to be bored for one night.
MORNING JOURNAL
The next morning, wake up early. You’re not on vacation. You have work to do.
Take 30 minutes to write down everything that’s on your mind. Even if you feel like you have nothing to write, sit down with a pen and paper. The words will come.
The point is to clear your mind of all the little thoughts that cloud your thinking.
Write free form. Don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense. No one will read it.
You’re trying to get rid of the clutter upstairs.
If it goes past 30 minutes, that’s okay, but try to sit and write for the full 30 minutes. If you feel stuck and have nothing to write, keep your notebook open and keep holding on to the pen. I promise you something will come to mind. Write it down.
Stop writing when you have nothing more to write. Now put whatever you wrote away and out of sight. You don’t need it anymore.
ACTIVATE YOUR BODY
Next, you want some form of physical exertion. You can go on a run, a long hike, yoga, or bike ride. The specific exercise is not important. Do what you enjoy. The goal is to get your heart rate up for about 30 minutes.
Come back, take a shower. You’re almost ready.
BREATHE
Finally, a quick breathing exercise. Studies have shown deep breathing can improve cognitive performance and reduce stress.
This will take less than four minutes. Do each of the following for a count of four:
Exhale slowly
Keep your lungs empty at the bottom
Inhale deeply
Keep your lungs full at the top
Repeat this four times.
You’re now primed and ready to start writing your Life Map.
*If you can’t take 1-2 nights away, don’t let that be a barrier. Just complete the exercise in as much solo time as you can get. Done is better than perfect.
2 — Creating your Life Map
Grab a pen and paper.
You’ll want to leave yourself enough time that you do not feel any pressure to finish by a certain hour. I recommend not having any commitments after your writing session*.
Once you start if you need to take a small break that’s fine. Just remember that you’re on a digital sabbath—don’t go checking your phone.
WHAT TO DO
Imagine your life in 3 years. You could do anything you wanted.
Now walk around your life as if you’ve traveled in time and are observing future-you.
Dream big and don’t hold back. Write as if you can’t fail.
Write in full sentences and paragraphs. Get specific.
You want to write with as much detail as possible. Remember, you’re time traveling. If you were really given the chance to travel into the future, would you not want to record everything you saw? Write down everything you see. Write like your life depends on it.
Here are a few questions to help you get started:
What does your day look like? Start from the minute you wake up.
Are you waking up beside anyone? Who is that person?
Do you have kids? Is there anyone else in the house? What about pets?
Do you have a partner? Describe them. Who have they become? How’s your relationship?
What does your morning routine look like?
Look in a mirror and describe the person you see. How have you aged? How are you dressed? Do you have a particular hairstyle? What’s in your closet?
Where are you living? Describe your city, neighborhood, and community.
Take a walk around your house. What’s your favorite room? What does your furniture look like? What objects are around the house? How is your place decorated?
What is your relationship with your family? Who do you support? Who supports you? Which family members you are closest with? Is there anyone that may no longer be around?
Describe your friends. Who are they? How often do you see them? What’s the conversation like when you get together? What do you give and what do you take from your friendships?
Talk about your work. What are you doing? What are you creating? How are you contributing? Do you work with anyone? What kind of people are they?
What do your weekdays look like? What about your weekends?
What are you reading? What are you learning?
How’s your health? What are you doing for exercise? How much do you weigh? Do you care about your weight? How is your mental health? How do you care for yourself?
Open up the fridge. What’s inside? What are you eating on a mundane Wednesday? How about on a special Saturday?
How much do you earn? What is your relationship with money? What do you splurge on? Do you have any investments? What do your savings look like?
What do you love to do? What motivates you? What excites you? What do you do for fun?
Where have you travelled to lately? Where are you going next? Who are you travelling with?
What are you looking forward to? What gets you up in the morning and keeps you going?
One helpful rule of thumb is whatever comes up comes out. If you think it, write it. Don’t edit yourself. You don’t have to share it with anyone. Keep writing until you’ve seen everything in your future.
When you’re done, you should have 5-10 full pages.
Your Life Map will help you move in the right direction. Just like a map, there are many paths to get to your end destination. The point of the exercise is to create the map, not to determine which path you are going to take to get to your destination.
The path you end up taking is called living life. That’s the great adventure.
A few more important notes:
The questions above are just to get you started. I encourage you to add your own based on what’s important to you in life.
I personally keep at 3 and 10 year Life Map. You can do this exercise for different time horizons. I like to start with 3 years because it’s clear to visualize. Five years is harder to see and 10 years becomes fuzzy.
Creating a Life Map with a longer time horizon allows you to dream bigger and expand on what is possible in life. If you have experience with visioning exercises, then feel free to create a 10 year Life Map instead. If you are new to visioning exercises, start with a 3 year Life Map. It makes the exercise a little easier to complete. You can always go back and create a 10 year Life Map at a later time. I just don’t recommend doing both over one weekend.
*That’s why going away for 2 nights if you can, is preferred over 1 night.
3 — Creating a Life Map with your partner
Two years into my relationship with Christine, I suggested we share our Life Map.
At this point, we had lived together for a few months. We’d casually talked about our future together, but hadn’t committed to one another beyond that. It was important to both of us that we had some alignment on what the future looked like.
After she created her Life Map, here are the questions we asked:
How do you see the future? Where do we align and differ?
Does you see yourself with me long term? What does that mean to you?
When do you want to have kids? How many? What role does career play in your life?
Where do you want to live?
What type of relationship do you want to have with my family? What kind of relationship do you expect that I have with yours?
Knowing the future that you see, how can I update my Life Map to meet yours?
How can I help you navigate your Life Map? Where can I ask your help in navigating mine?
It can be scary to share your Life Map with someone else. But it’s even more frightening to spend years of your life not knowing if you’re working towards the same vision of the future with someone.
If you do end up sharing your Life Map with a partner, it’s critical that they create a Life Map independently and without any prior knowledge of yours. You do not want to bias each other. Once you have both created a Life Map, you can share and revise.
4 — What I’m reading
Last year, I updated my Life Map to include being a world-class writer (I have a long way to go). Writing this newsletter has been one step towards that future. Another one has been learning new techniques to improve my reading and writing skills.
How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Anrens is part of a series of three books that I picked up earlier this year. Highly recommended if you’re serious about improving your writing and ready to invest time learning a new note-taking system.
The other two books, which I read earlier this year are How to Read a Book and 10 Days to Faster Reading. I’ve also updated my bookshelf.
5 — Big vouch
You should know about Julian Shapiro (@julian).
Julian is a writer, entrepreneur, and one of the most energizing people I’ve met.
I highly recommend his post What to work on: Choosing your big projects. For some, knowing just want to work on is a precursor to creating a Life Map.
Julian and I met years ago when I hired his growth agency Bell Curve to run growth marketing for thisopenspace. He’s been an inspiration ever since. For example, I recall being immediately struck by his light-hearted, high-energy, talk-to-you-as-a-friend mannerism when running client meetings. It made me loosen up the metaphoric tie around my neck and learn to incorporate fun and play into work.
Julian is also one of the clearest writers on the internet. His wide-spanning and comprehensive guidebooks cover everything from Growth Marketing to Building Muscle. He’s helped me grow my business and develop personally.
6 — Sounds of the week
Dopaminergic Frequencies by Catamie Therapy (Soundcloud). As always, listen to the entire playlist. If you must, skip to 1:05:45 for the buildup and drop that get me going.
7 — Quote
We have another chance to navigate, perhaps in a slightly different way than we did yesterday. We cannot go back. But we can learn.
— Jeffrey R. Anderson, The Nature of Things.
Last Words
I hope you create a Life Map and that it serves you well.
There are other versions of this visioning exercise. Debbie Millman teaches the Remarkable Life exercise. Cameron Herold wrote a book titled Vivid Vision. I recently learned about Brian Scudamore’s Painted Picture. They have all been an inspiration to what I am calling the Life Map.
For the next post, I’m working on an exercise to identify personal values. Not the ones you say you have, but the deeper values that you actually live out. That’s coming up in a couple of weeks.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, forward it to a friend or click below to share.
Until next time,
Yashar