Blaz Kos

kaizen & growth mindset

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  • Self-reflection, retrospective and journaling

    Imagine an iceberg floating in the ocean. Only one tenth of the iceberg is visible, while the rest of it lies deep beneath the surface – mighty, intimidating and alluring. It’s the same with your mind. Your conscious mind makes up less than 10 % of your brain function. The mighty rest is your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind is composed of unintentional and habitual thoughts, behaviours, and actions.

    That’s why no human is the master in his own house. The subconscious mind is like an autopilot that triggers certain behaviours in certain situations. The triggered behaviour doesn’t necessarily lead to the desired outcome. Even more: you often don’t have a clue about why you’re doing a certain thing and why you feel the way you feel. In some situations, you can even become self-destructive or completely misinterpret the feedback from your environment, which leads to an entirely wrong decision.

    Self-reflection can help you with that. Through self-reflection, you can change how you see yourself and how you feel about certain situations and, at the end, how you act. Consequently, you can also change how other people see you.

    We could define self-reflection as careful thought about your own behaviour and beliefs. If we develop the definition further, self-reflection is really asking yourself thought-provoking questions so that you can develop a deeper level of understanding yourself.

    The most important direct or indirect benefits of self-reflection are:

    • Understanding and knowing yourself better, for example why you were feeling a certain way and why you did something or made a certain decision
    • Becoming more aware and thus more proactive than reactive, meaning you have more personal power and control
    • Having a clearer picture about your true desires and who you really are
    • Analysing feedback from your environment based on your actions and taking it into account for the desired final outcome of your actions (every action in life brings a reaction)
    • Removing inner roadblocks and releasing emotional tension

    There are also many side benefits of self-reflection, like developing better communication skills, critical thinking, self-learning, self-awareness, social awareness, empathy, analytical capabilities and sensitivity to cultural differences, meaning you become more tolerant. Long-term benefits of self-reflection are also increased professional value and value for personal relationships, resulting in you having a greater capacity for work, creativity, love and, at the bottom line, being happier.

    There are two levels of self-reflection you should be doing regularly:

    • Action retrospective for regular improvements and adjustments to the environment after every sprint
    • Self-analysis for knowing yourself better and being happier in life in the long-term

    Sprint retrospective

    No matter how productive or successful you are in life, there’s always an opportunity to improve. There’s always a way to do things better. The more you become aware of yourself, your actions and your environment, and the more you are open to experiment and try new things (frequently out of the box), the better your potential for improvement is. In different words: becoming wiser unlocks the opportunity for improvement.

    As Confucius said, we may learn wisdom by three methods: “First, by reflection, which is the noblest; second, by imitation, which is the easiest; and third, by experience, which is the most bitter.”

    Since we don’t want to be bitter in life and we don’t want to only imitate other people, much less the wrong ones, let’s focus on improving ourselves by reflection. In agile development, we know the so-called sprint retrospective. The purpose of the sprint retrospective is to learn what works for the team and what doesn’t, and to make adjustments for the next sprint. A sprint retrospective usually takes two to four hours and the team tries to answer a few basic but hard questions:

    • What went well during the last sprint that the team will continue doing?
    • What could the team do differently?
    • How can the team implement the change?

    Based on that, the team should make three decisions and stick to them:

    • What to start doing
    • What to stop doing
    • What to continue doing

    There is no reason why you couldn’t do the same in your personal life. When living the Agile and Lean Life, you don’t just do work and execute tasks. You have to think regularly about why you’re doing something and how you’re doing it, and whether you’re making real progress –progress that brings value to your life. Being strong and passionate about the reason why is the best motivator you can have in life, and as mentioned before, there’s always a way to do things better. That’s why personal sprint reflections are so important.

    In the Agile and Lean Life productivity framework, you have regularly scheduled intervals (seven or fourteen days) for planning the next sprint and reflecting on the previous sprint. While planning the sprint and doing the retrospective in your personal life, you should do the following:

    • Review the tasks done in the previous interval
    • Connect with yourself and straighten out your life vision (why)
    • Measure your real progress
    • Adjust the strategy and plan
    • Reflect on new things you learned
    • Gather new ideas
    • Identify potential improvements
    • Set new tasks for the upcoming interval

    Thinking about the elements listed above during your interval planning and reflection, you should ask yourself the following questions: what went well during the last sprint, what you were doing right, what didn’t go that well, why that is so and what you could do differently and how. Based on that, you should make three decisions:

    • What will you start doing in your life?
    • What will you stop doing in your life?
    • What will you continue doing in your life?

    To really implement the change in your life, you have to consider your own behaviour, the desired result, people involved in the process, relationships, the process itself and the tools that can help you improve your work.

    There are two options for when to take time for reflection:

    • Every week or every two weeks when you make time for planning the sprint and doing reflection
    • You plan the sprint in the beginning of the week and do reflection at the end of the week or in two-week intervals. Whatever works better for you. Some people like to combine planning and reflection, others don’t.

    The process is simple: you sit down and go through all the planning and reflection elements and questions listed above.

    If there is no change in your behaviour – the decisions you make, the strategy you follow, the actions you do etc. after your reflection, your reflection simply had no real value. The purpose of the sprint retrospective isn’t just to feel a little bit better about yourself for planning and strategizing. Avoid the fake feeling of progress at all costs. If you don’t know what you’ll do differently after the reflection, if you don’t know how you’ll change your behaviour, you’re doing it wrong. Applying wisdom in practice is the key to progress, not only being aware of something.

    Self-analysis and journaling

    Self-analysis is kind of a different story and takes reflection even a step further. Don’t get me wrong, you need both processes for the best results, but you do have to know the difference between both tools.

    To start with the biggest difference: if you have to force yourself to make a certain decision after self-analysis, you haven’t done it right. Self-analysis is about understanding yourself and noticing, not judging and forcing yourself into anything.

    There is no “stop doings”, “start doings” and “continue doings”. It’s about changing the course of your life without any force, by better understanding who you are and what you are through analytical thinking.

    With self-analysis, you’re going way deeper. It’s not only about your plan, actions and environment anymore, but about you, your whys, about who you truly are and what you want in life. It’s more about getting rid of emotional shit and intruded behaviour you’ve accumulated in the past, which consequently increases your capacity for love, self-worth and self-respect.

    Of course in the long term, self-analysis is also strongly connected to your performance level, productivity and success, much as sprint planning is in the short term. If you look at Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle, the sprint retrospective is more about what and how, while self-analysis is more about why; and you should always start with why.

    There are two main ways of doing self-analysis:

    Psychoanalysis – Frankly, we aren’t talking about self-analysis anymore, but more about the professional process of gaining insights about yourself with a therapist. As you probably know, psychoanalysis was founded by Sigmund Freud and its aim is to release repressed emotions and experiences by making the unconscious thoughts conscious. It’s also about rebuilding your inner blueprint for healthy relationships.

    It’s a very valuable process, but the downside is that psychoanalysis is time-consuming and there are no quick answers. It usually takes a few years of regular weekly meetings with a psychoanalyst. You have to be very motivated to go through the process, but you know how it is: you only get out as much as you put in, and this process can be pure gold for you, especially if you have many cognitive distortions.

    Journaling – The second option, less professional, intense and scientific but still with great value, is to lead the self-analysing process yourself. You won’t internalize a new healthier blueprint for relationships, but you can get many insights about yourself. The best way to keep the needed discipline and to trigger analytical thinking in your brain is journaling.

    Journaling and your self-reflective journal

    Instead of having a psychoanalyst, a journal can be your tool for self-reflection and analytical work. When I talk about journaling, I’m not talking about writing down everything that happened to you on a specific day. I’m talking about why it happened, how you felt, why did you feel that way, how is that connected to your values and beliefs and so on.

    Keeping a self-reflective journal is not about your day and what happened, but about your thoughts, your perspective, your feelings, your words, your actions and about the feedback from your environment. It’s about becoming aware of why you acted like you did and what the result of your behaviour was. It’s about becoming aware of who you are, what your true desires are, identifying your cognitive distortions and so on. All that should lead to insights, understanding and better knowing yourself.

    Regularly reflecting by writing a journal will enable you to:

    • Get to know yourself step by step throughout different life situations
    • Be better connected to your true self, your values, emotions and desires
    • You will become more aware and come to more insights as well as understand your environment better, especially the people who are the closest to you
    • Develop deeper relationships by developing a greater capacity for love and by better understanding yourself. Being more tolerant towards yourself means being more tolerant towards others.
    • Have outstanding clarity and focus
    • Track your personal development and personal evolution. It will also accelerate your personal growth and development. You’ll be able to track your linear and rapid improvements.

    Other benefits of journaling:

    • You get things out of your head and clear your mind, which can relax you and give you more creative and analytical potential.
    • You gain insights you would otherwise miss, especially since you’re keeping track of your thoughts and thinking. You quickly forget what you don’t write down, even the best business ideas.
    • Journaling is also a very powerful problem-solving tool, especially for complex problems.

    There are three main ways of how to keep your journal (it’s not rocket science, but still):

    Notebook – By far the best way to do self-reflection by journaling is writing things down. Your hand is connected directly to your brain and it’s a good feeling to have full control, while nothing is buzzing or blinking or distracting you. All you have to do is buy a notebook, schedule some time and start writing.

    Applications – You have many applications you can use for journaling, such as text processors, editors, notepads and journaling software. If you decide for an app, you should test a few of them and select the one that works best for you. Maybe you can start with Evernote.

    Private blog – The third option, also electronic, is having a private blog. Here are the instructions for how to open a blog (a public one, but all you have to do is keep it private). It’s probably not the best option and it’s also not the safest, but if it works for you, why not use it.

    Some additional directions for keeping your journal as a self-reflective tool:

    Be constant

    The easiest way to start journaling is when you’re pissed off or have had a very vivid day. That’s okay, a journal is a great tool for situations like that, but to get the most out of journaling, you should do it consistently, daily. For example, for 30 minutes every day before you go to sleep.

    It will become a habit for you, your mind will get into the state for self-reflection faster and you’ll have consistent history. The most powerful thoughts you can work with usually come when you have an empty head.

    Be alone and without distractions

    Keeping a self-reflective journal is about association. Associations always lead you to the core of the problem. An important part of it is that nobody should distract your flow of associations. That’s why it’s good to be alone and without distractions such as a phone or anything else.

    Whys

    Encourage your association flow by asking yourself why. Do it five times if necessary. Even ten if it leads you to more insight. As already mentioned, associations will slowly lead you to the core of everything, you’ll become aware sooner or later. You will get an insight into why you feel like you do and why you’ve found yourself in the situation you’re currently in.

    5-Whys is also a great problem-solving method. Write down a problem you have and ask yourself “why” five times. After every answer, you ask yourself “why?” again and that will lead you to the core of the problem. Here is an example (source: Wikipedia):

    • The vehicle will not start. (the problem)
    • Why? – The battery is dead. (first why)
    • Why? – The alternator is not functioning. (second why)
    • Why? – The alternator belt has broken. (third why)
    • Why? – The alternator belt was well beyond its useful service life and not replaced. (fourth why)
    • Why? – The vehicle was not maintained according to the recommended service schedule. (fifth why, the root cause)

    Intellectual and emotional body

    You need to distinguish between your mind and your emotions. It’s true that our thoughts and emotions are strongly connected, but you’re often in situations where something seems totally logical (how you should feel or do), but your emotions tell you a completely different story. Your emotions are the compass that leads you to the real insights.

    For example, it may be logical that you take a new job that has a higher pay-check and more opportunities. But your emotions may not completely agree with the rational decision. You can feel your emotional body resisting. It’s part of your analytical job to ask yourself why. Five or even more times, if necessary.

    You can help yourself with the following questions and guidelines:

    • Clearly describe a situation that happened to you
    • How does it make you feel and why? Continue with whys.
    • The situation you’re in and your feelings, what do they remind you of the most?

    No judging, just noticing

    The purpose of self-reflection by journaling is not to judge and criticize yourself or analyse what you should do and what you shouldn’t. It’s about being understanding, tolerant and noticing things about yourself.

    It’s not about strengthening your inner critique, but vice versa. It’s about increasing your capacity for love towards yourself and others by becoming more aware and knowing yourself and your past. No matter what, be gentle with yourself when self-reflecting.

    For increasing your short-term performance, productivity and improvement, regularly plan sprints and do reflections. And for increasing your long-term performance and happiness, do regular reflections and self-analysis by keeping a journal. It may seem like a huge investment, but it’s an investment that will enable you to really go for your true desires and goals. It doesn’t matter how hard you work if you aren’t doing the right thing. Dare to be yourself!

  • Environment you operate in and ideal conditions for you

    I’ve frequently mentioned that you need an environment that supports you at achieving your goals, an environment where you fit in perfectly. To prosper in life, you need to be a part of something that feels like home and natural to you, and enables you to prosper, develop and grow. You need an environment with ideal conditions for you to thrive.

    To better understand what ideal conditions really mean, let’s look at the environmental variables you can choose from and even change if necessary. It’ll help you to clarify what ideal environmental conditions mean for you and how to build such an environment.

    There are two ecosystems that you spend most of your time in, both consisting of space and relationships:

    • Personal environment, with your home, spouse, family and friends
    • Business environment, with your office, co-workers and stakeholders

    The better you know yourself, the better you understand what kind of an environment you need to flourish. It’s good to first do a personal SWOT analysis and reflect on what you like in your current environment and what you liked and disliked in your past environments. Based on that, you can make validated assumptions on which environmental elements support you and which drag you down. You’ll also get an idea of what to test and what to change. It’s the typical Agile and Lean Life process of searching, experimenting and then executing.

    Building an environment that supports you is an important part of your life strategy. Now let’s look at some ideas on which variables to test, experiment with and validate when it comes to your environment.

    Your personal environment

    Your personal environment is your private space where you spend your free time, usually with people who are the closest to you, meaning your spouse, family and friends. There are some major decisions you have to make regarding your personal environment. Even if you don’t make any decisions, life makes them for you. But it’s always better to be the pilot of your own life.

    When doing an analysis and setting goals for the personal environment that would perfectly support your personal goals, you should consider the following elements:

    • Country that suits you best – if there is an option to move, otherwise optimize within
    • Political and macroeconomic stability of the country and the level of bureaucracy
    • Metropolis / City / Countryside – which supports your personal goals best?
    • Local weather and climate (number of sunny days, seasons…)
    • Available infrastructure (for you to commute, travel…)
    • Access to healthcare and social security
    • Opportunities for your personal evolution and growth
    • Access to (healthy) food you like and easy access to sports you want to do
    • Cleanliness of natural resources (air, water etc.)
    • Access to formal and informal education for you and your family
    • How close/far you are/need to be to your primary family
    • Support environment for the elderly population (you’ll get old one day as well)
    • Is this the right environment for you to find the right spouse and build your family?
    • Does the environment support your hobbies and things you do for fun?
    • Access to nature and pets (if important to you)
    • Cultural life (art, music etc.) (if important to you)
    • Access to technology and information
    • Safety of the environment
    • Dominant religion
    • House / Flat / Other – the one that you feel best in and can afford
    • Interior decoration (including visual aids supporting your goals)
    • Tidiness and cleanliness of your surroundings (order, creative chaos…)
    • Other elements

    As you’ve probably figured out, you can’t have everything. Thus you have to choose your priorities and rank every factor based on how important it is to you. After knowing which elements of the private environment are important to you, you can analyse which cities support you best.

    • For some, living in New York city centre is optimal
    • For others, living in a small European country in the countryside is better
    • For someone else, a safe city is perfect, just big enough to have enough variety in cultural life

    A factor that’s even more important than the space where you spend most of your free time are the private relationships in your life. Private relationships include your spouse, your primary family, your secondary family, your friends, your acquaintances and your neighbours.

    By far the most important relationship you have in your life is the one with your spouse. Your spouse can make you or break you. If you don’t fit together, if you don’t support each other and have common goals, life is much harder and more complicated. The problem, of course, is that because the people we love are the closest to us, we know their weaknesses and can consequently most easily hurt them when we aren’t satisfied with ourselves. But you should never take your own problems out on your partner.

    In order for you to have a healthy relationship with your spouse, there must be lust and there must be respect. There must be a clear picture of who will do what, who will invest what and what each one expects out of the relationship. If you complement each other, even better. The foundation of every good relationship is communication. If you want to communicate well with your partner, you must know what you want and explain what your expectations are.

    Here are some elements you should be clear about with your spouse (making a persona can help a lot):

    • Basic demographics (age, gender…)
    • Basic psycho-sociological traits (religion, culture…)
    • Must-have values and traits (intelligence, integrity, health…)
    • Key characteristics (kindness, persistence…)
    • Deal breakers (smoking, cruelty)
    • Goals (building a family, )
    • Other

    When thinking about these elements, don’t only consider what you want, but also what kind of a person would have to be by your side in order for you to thrive the most. It’s not only about finding people you feel good with, but also about surrounding yourself with people who push you to prosper and develop as quickly as possible.

    For example, I know how to make money, but I’m lousy at keeping money. Having a spouse who is frugal is a big value added for me. I know I have to eat healthy, so having a spouse who also eats healthy is very important for my optimal health. If I had a partner who loved to bake and cook unhealthy food, I would definitely get fat. Like ultra-overweight.

    You should do the same analysis for your friends, acquaintances, neighbours and other people you meet in your personal life. Ask yourself:

    • Which country would be optimal for my personal goals?
    • Where would I feel the best and prosper (city, space…)?
    • Who is the optimal spouse for me (lust + respect + daily life + being your best)?
    • What kind of a friendship would help me flourish the most?
    • Which visual and other aids in my home environment would motivate me the most?

    Your business environment

    Most of us usually spend even more time in our business environment than at home. Much like you need space and people who support you in your private life, so you need the right environment for your business life and goals. The rule is quite simple. The more ambitious you are, the more you need the right environment that supports your ambitions.

    Working in the office

    Business hubs are usually the right business environment to support great ambitions. They are the geographical areas where talent, technology, tolerance and transparency are concentrated. It’s an environment where the flow of people, money, information and other resources is the greatest.

    Here are some macro-elements of a business environment you should consider:

    • Political and macroeconomic stability
    • Market and job market trends
    • Economical (in)equality
    • International integration
    • Are there enough opportunities to build a career you want and to earn adequate income?

    That is a macro-level view. On the micro level, you have many other decisions to make. Let’s look at some important factors that can support you or stifle your ambitions:

    • Industries that fit your talents, industry trends and opportunities
    • Employed, self-employed, business owner
    • Size of the company (micro, small, medium, big)
    • Level of specialization
    • Opportunities for promotion
    • Level of stress and uncertainty
    • Individual / Pair / Teamwork
    • Responsibility level – decision-making or more of a consulting role

    People you spend time with are also very important:

    • Values and competences of your boss and other superiors
    • Company values and values of your co-workers (should be similar to yours)
    • Stakeholders you’re dealing with

    And last but not least, don’t forget about your office:

    • Cubicle / Private Office / Co-working space / Working from home
    • Technological equipment
    • Visual aids (like Kanban boards)

    You should consider which business environment would allow you to deliver the most value, develop your competences to the full in the long run, achieve the position and the renown you want and, of course, achieve your financial goals. If your business environment doesn’t enable you that, you’ll have to either change it or lower your ambitions.

    I worked in a business environment where I felt really great, had the same values as my co-workers, the market trends were right and so on. It was in the venture capital industry, just before the financial collapse in 2008. The market trends enabled me to progress quickly, I loved what I was doing and I was managing a satellite company of a big investment bank which helped me build my own brand. In my early twenties, it was the perfect spot for me.

    I also worked in a business environment where the market trends were against me, I didn’t have the same values as my co-workers, I did tasks that were no challenge to me, there was a lot of politics, and so on. The end result was that I was completely unhappy, my progress in life was slow andI ended up having health issues.

    Never forget. Markets always win.

    And even more importantly: The culture of the environment you function in eats your strategy for breakfast.

    That’s why you need an environment that’s adjusted to your life strategy and goals. That’s why you need an environment where you can flourish and prosper. What is the optimal business environment for you?

  • T-shaped skills in every area of your life

    While the concept of T-shaped skills is not so new, it is now more important than ever. The world is becoming more and more complex and T-shaped skills are a razor that can cut through all the complexity.

    Your T-shaped skillset must constantly become broader (- general knowledge) and narrower (| specialized knowledge) as the world becomes more complex, nevertheless having T-shapes skills is one of the biggest competitive advantage you can have in the creative society when contributing value for the markets or when achieving your goals.

    Let’s see why. Well, to really understand the whole story, we have to go from dashes (-) and I’s to T’s, PI’s and even hashtags (#).

    Dash-shaped skills and low value added

    Dash (-) shaped skills simply means having some general knowledge about everything. You are a generalist, no real specialist at anything. This kind of people are usually called jacks-of-all-trades and considered as masters of none. If you are a generalist, your T doesn’t have any support to lean on and with that, several problems occur.

    The first problem is that it’s hard to gain respect from people, especially other specialists, if you don’t excel at something. The second problem is that the world is becoming so complex and saturated with information that as a result, being a generalist means pretty much nothing.

    Your general knowledge must be in a specific context to have any power at all. That context usually comes from having a connected specialized skill.

    Having dash-shaped skills usually also means providing low value added. With all the knowledge accessible to you with one click, it’s easy to become a generalist at anything. If you are a generalist, the value added you provide is only a little bit higher than providing manual work that anyone can do.

    Let’s look at some facts and practical examples:

    • People will respect you when you are really good at something. Furthermore, the halo effect will happen and they will think that you are even better in other areas of life. It’s hard to achieve that if you don’t have your own forte, but just general knowledge about something.
    • If you want to provide value to a team, you do have to be a generalist capable of working efficiently in a team, but people will recognize your value if you contribute a specific kind of skill.

    If you are an extremely good copywriter and additionally have general knowledge about internet marketing, then the combination of both is really powerful. But if you only have some general knowledge about the internet, then marketing is not nearly as valuable. General knowledge is context and foundation.

    Usually when you go to a generalist doctor, you can know more about a specific problem you have than he does, just by searching for information and cases on the internet.

    Twenty years ago, there may have been room in this world for generalists, from doctors, lawyers to managers, marketers and others. But the value of generalists was made obsolete by the internet, search engines and the curiosity of people who don’t want to be only specialists but want to know and master more from their industry.

    And there’s enough people like that. High competition, low value added.

    I-shaped skills

    The basic fact is that if you want to get paid well for your work, you have to be good at something that is high in demand, but has a rare supply. In other words: you need I-shaped skills: you need to be good at something that not many people on the market are good at.

    The good news is that there are more and more disciplines you can be good at. While internet marketing was a specialization 10 years ago, now you can be a specialist for paid advertising, search engine optimization, social media marketing and so on. It’s not much different in other industries.

    The bad news is that it’s becoming harder and harder to be a specialist. We annually produce more information and knowledge than we have in the whole history of humankind. Thus becoming a specialist means very hard work and constant improvement.

    Another big problem is also that faculties are producing more generalists than specialists, so becoming a specialist is a task you have to undertake on your own.

    But there is an even more important secret to having I-shaped skills. Creative capitalism or the knowledge economy respects talented people more than anything else. Not only talented people, but those talented people who work hard to develop and capitalize their talent.

    The higher the demand, the rarer a skill and the better you master the skill, the more value you provide to the market. Markets are prepared to reward you completely disproportionately to the average for that kind of skill, to your advantage, of course.

    Four groups of I-shaped skills

    There are four groups of I-shaped skills that are highly respected on the market in general.

    The first group are business skills, like management, marketing, finance, sales, e-commerce etc. But you really have to be extremely good at it. Some disciplines, like marketing, are so broad that you need to find your niche inside the industry.

    The second group are engineering skills, from IT to biotech and all other promising industries. Scientists are extremely valuable in the knowledge economy. This group also includes specialists like doctors, lawyers, investors, etc. who are really good at their jobs and specialize for things high in demand.

    The third group are creative people – people who know how to be different and better, people who have awesome ideas and know how to bring them to life; entrepreneurs for example.

    The fourth group is show business and all successful musicians, sportsmen, artists, actors, entertainers and so on can be included in this group.

    In all four groups, you have the top 1 – 4 % who are paid extremely well (a.k.a. rich people), 16 – 20% of people who are above average (a.k.a. upper middle class) and others who earn average respect and salaries from other people and markets.

    There is no doubt that you want to become extremely good at something. At something that is rare, hard to learn; at something that is currently high in demand and will be high in demand in the future. But there is even more value added that you can put on your I-shaped skills. You want to see the forest, not only the trees.

    T shaped internet marketer
    Example of T-shaped internet marketer.

    T-shaped skills with E power

    People who are extremely good at something and become aware of how valuable they are usually become hard to work with. You know, everyone from assholes and divas to people who want to have special benefits all the time.

    Working with people like that is hard and if you aren’t a true star or Jennifer Lopez, your value added can start fading, since teams are becoming more important than individuals.

    When it comes to complex problems in the business world that are more difficult to solve, interdisciplinary teams provide the most value. And there is no I in TEAM. Thus you need to develop a broad set of skills that are a dash over your I.

    A combination of those two, being a specialist for one thing and a generalist for a few others, especially people skills, gives a really powerful combination.

    For example, the idea of agile teams in software development is to be cross-functional and self-organizing, meaning all members need to have some specific competences, but all members also need general competences that allow them to deliver everything by themselves and work together efficiently. In agile teams, there is no room for general project managers.

    I is something you are talented at. I is something you are passionate about. I is something you love to focus on and work hard for. I is something for which you have good ideas easily. I is something at which you want to constantly improve and push the limits. I is something at which you constantly persist and keep creating new products to serve people.

    A dash over the I is your curiosity. A dash over the I is context knowledge that empowers your I. A dash over the I is leverage, since you need to work with other people, understand paradigms, the rules of life and industry, and future trends. A dash over the I is your foundation that allows you to dive as deep as possible.

    General skills that are good to have no matter what you are doing as a specialist:

    • A broad knowledge about something (law, economy, software development, linguistics…)
    • A broader context for your specialized skill set (SEO expert – e.g. internet marketing)
    • A basic knowledge of how humans and the society work (biology, psychology, sociology…)
    • Understanding the industry you work in, its trends and paradigms
    • Basic knowledge of how the business world works

    Soft skills you have to be good at, unless you are an ultra-geek or a genius:

    • Teamwork
    • Communication skills and networking, with good enough English skills
    • Time management
    • Information technology
    • Tolerance and open-mindedness

    Soft skills that provide additional value (you can even become a specialist):

    • Leadership and organization
    • Negotiations
    • Presentations and giving lectures
    • Creativity and innovation
    • The basics of marketing and sales

    There is another competence I have to emphasize, no matter how good of an I, T or dash you are. That is execution (E). Ideas have almost zero value. We all have ideas. There are too many ideas everywhere. Execution is much more important than ideas.

    It doesn’t matter that you’ve read a hundred books about swimming if you haven’t done a single stroke in the water. It doesn’t matter that you have a very rare knowledge and a thousand ideas if at the same time you’re a lazy procrastinator, unable to deliver. I and T without E are almost useless.

    Different areas of life and T-shaped skills powered by E

    Until now, we’ve more or less talked only about business and skill combinations that can get you paid the most on the market. But you can use the same concept in all other areas of life.

    Having strong foundations and diving deep into something that interests you is a winning combination in all areas of life. With strong discipline and execution, of course. Let’s look at a few examples.

    Practical examples

    If you want to be healthy, doing only one sport you love isn’t enough. You also need to know the basics of a good diet, you need to work on your core muscles, flexibility, condition etc. All that is a strong foundation that enables you to be really good at a specific sport. The T-shaped skills approach.

    If you want to have good relationships, you need to find people with common interests and the same values. But you also need to be good at communication, know how to manage difficult situations, have ideas for what to do together and so on. Good people skills are a foundation for good relationships. But in order for relationships to work in the long term, you also need more profound connections, based on common values and interests.

    It’s the same with money. You need to have a broad knowledge of how financial markets work, about different investing options etc. But if you really want to make a good return, you have to become extremely good at one type of investments. You have to be better than 90 % of other investors in the same asset class.

    We can even apply the same concept to spirituality. Before you believe in something 100 %, be it a religion or any other spiritual idea, you want to understand why having such a belief is important. You want to understand different religions, spiritual concepts etc. It’s the foundation for finding something that will really empower you to the full. It’s the foundation that will give your life a greater meaning.

    Same goes for all other areas of life. You want to do things that you know are fun for you and you are good at, but that shouldn’t stop you from constantly trying new and new things. As mentioned your T-shaped skillset must constantly become broader (- general knowledge) and narrower (| specialized knowledge) in all areas of life.

    PI-shaped skillset can take you even a step further

    Becoming a really well-shaped and strong T in life is basically a lifelong process. It’s not easy and it demands constant improvements, hard work and finding a balance between acquiring general and specific knowledge. You have to keep expanding and narrowing your T-shaped skills.

    But more and more people are aware of the T-shaped skills advantage, so there is another level where you can take your skills even a step further and provide much more value added. If you are a true achievement-oriented freak.

    The concept is the so-called PI-shaped skillset. The idea is that you are a generalist on one side, but a specialist at two or even more things on the other.

    A magical power comes from transferring ideas and knowledge from one specialist area to the other and vice versa or from combining two fields into one product. For example, you are fitness specialist and a programmer, and so you make a fitness app.

    As mentioned before, becoming extremely good at more than one thing in life is pretty damn hard. Therefore people who are capable of PI shaped skills are usually people who have developed certain competences at a young age.

    For example, playing a specific sport or a musical instrument, practicing a certain type of art or hobby, the latter combined with a completely different field of study, can give magical results and PI-shaped skills by default.

    It’s good to be aware of the competences you’ve developed over your lifetime and whether there are any good ways to combine them.

    All others of us, who hadn’t developed certain specialized skills in our youth, have to make a decision whether being a T is good enough or we want to sacrifice more time and other areas of life to become PIs.

    It’s a question everyone has to answer for themselves. Nevertheless, make sure and work hard to be more than only a dash or an I. You know you have a greater potential and it’s your duty to work hard to bring that potential to life.

    Homework

    To sum things up together with pointing out action items:

    • Find something that you’re passionate about and is/will be high in demand, focus yourself, dive deep and constantly improve. Sooner, you start to go deeper, be better. Don’t feel bad that you won’t be able to master many things, the world has just become too complex.
    • When you are an expert, never lose your general curiosity. Constantly read about your industry and other subjects. Try new things. Understand how the business world and financial markets work. Understand how we humans work. Understand trends and paradigms. Combine different areas. Have fun.
    • Take your game to a whole new level by systematically combining your different specialties. Win.

    Reaching the ultimate level – Hastag

    You want even more than pi? Well, there is one more level, the ultimate competence level. Become a hashtag #-skilled person.

    • (Dash one) A generalist in a few industries.
    • (Dash two) Develop soft skills.
    • (I one) Be a specialist at one thing.
    • (I two). Be a specialist at a completely different thing.
    • Combine all four. Win big.

  • Your life strategy

    The key to a more successful life is having a superior strategy for living it. Hoping that everything turns out okay is not a strategy.

    Your life strategy is especially shaped by your beliefs, values, personal management system, and thus by your decisions about spending your time, energy, money, skills and other resources. After setting your life vision, you should think carefully over your life strategy and the direction it’s taking you in. This blog post will help you with that.

    For extraordinary results, you need an extraordinary approach. For extraordinary life, you need an extraordinary strategy.

    Even if you don’t have a specific strategy, you do have at least some sort of a strategy. It’s usually a combination of what you’ve learned through primary and secondary socialization, especially from your parents, grandparents, other people who raised you and the schooling system, and later in your life of what is expected from you by social norms in your country, dominating religion etc.

    If not any of that, your default strategy is usually what happens to you by chance. For example you end up in an industry where you’ve landed your first job after having sent CVs to numerous companies in different industries.

    Having no strategy as a child is a fact, but later on it’s your personal decision. As a child, you can’t take any decisions for yourself. All you can do is observe, learn and try to function in completely dependent relationships. The healthier the environment that you’re raised in, the better off you usually are regarding your life strategy and the better your starting point is when taking complete control over your life.

    But even if you were raised in a perfect environment, no one is completely the same as their parents and nor they should be. There’s also the additional fact that times change (your environment), thus sooner or later you have to shape your own life strategy if you want to be happy and successful. Modeling as a life strategy works only to a certain extent.

    Your personal power is the key in consciously shaping your life strategy

    The more personal power you develop over the years (mastering yourself), the greater the influence you have on how your life will turn out. Somewhere in adolescence, you start to take over the power in different areas of life and soon it’s totally up to you how you will live it.

    At the end of the day, you only have two choices – either you follow your own goals or the goals of other people; either you are the pilot of your life or other people are, from your past and your present.

    The most important thing you have to be aware of is that you always have a choice. If you don’t like something, there is always a move you can make towards a better life. You don’t betray anyone if you change your beliefs or your values over time.

    There’s nothing wrong with choosing to look at the world through different lenses, lenses that suit you better. It’s your life and you should live it completely true to yourself. You have to be yourself since everyone else is taken; you have to be yourself if you want to be happy.

    But just being yourself isn’t enough, not even close. You also have to be smart. You want to be happy and successful as well. You want to be different and better. You want to shape a life strategy that will take you to your goals and enable you to experience as much of your life vision as possible.

    “I am who I am” should not be an excuse for not playing the game of life smartly, dedicatedly and masterfully. You don’t get a second chance so it’s really important that you regularly think through how you will play the game of life.

    Saying that you always have a choice may sound easy, but it’s not. Every change means that you want to achieve a state that’s different from the default; and changing things takes courage, effort, investments etc. The greater the change you want to make in life, the more effort it will take.

    The worse your starting position is and the more ambitious goals you have, the more effort it will take to change the course of your life. Your strategy will have to be more superior, you will have to play smarter and work harder.

    The world is designed to reward those who master its rules.

    The elements of your life strategy

    Of course you constantly change your life strategy over the course of your life, especially when you experience new things and epiphanies. Thus you should regularly update your life strategy by having your end goals and your life vision in mind.

    Nevertheless your life strategy mainly consists of the following decisions you have to make sooner or later:

    • Your mindset and your personality
    • Taking care of your physical body and physical appearance
    • Formal education
    • Informal education and developing competences and skills
    • Information intake and communicating strategy
    • Your past and relationships with your primary family
    • Intimate relationships and your secondary family
    • Your sex life
    • Relationship with your kids
    • Money and investment strategy
    • Career strategy
    • Your social strategy
    • Hobbies and having fun strategy
    • Travel and transportation strategy
    • Home and your surroundings strategy
    • Strategy toward animals and nature
    • Art and culture
    • Using technology and your digital trail strategy
    • Your nation, country and political system
    • Spirituality, religion and asking for help
    • Taking care of your emotional body
    • Dealing with enemies, bad and evil in the world
    • Your legacy and social engagement strategy
    • When do you want to give up?

    Now let’s break down one by one.

    Your mindset and your personality

    The first and most important part of your life strategy is you. You have to make a choice of how much you will bother with yourself and your goals and how much you will just go with the flow. It’s your choice whether you will live your life with the growth mindset or the fixed mindset and that’s probably the key decision you have to make in your life.

    I am of course biased towards the growth mindset, but there are definitely many people who live a good life with a fixed mindset as well. The question is what works best for you.

    After choosing the growth or fixed mindset, you have to decide how much and when you will compete, and when and where you will cooperate. Cooperating is usually a part of the prestige mindset and competing a part of the dominating mindset. We all have and live both mindsets, the only question is when do we chose one over the other. It’s an important part of your life strategy. For example in sports, you may brutally compete, while at your job you help all your coworkers.

    The next decision you’ll have to make is where your mind focus will be, in your past, present or future, and what kind of an outlook you will have to each time frame. For your past, you can focus on negative or positive events. For your present, you can be more hedonistic or more fatalistic. And for your future, you can be goal oriented or surrender yourself to a greater power and posthumous life.

    Let’s continue with your personal level of ethics and morality. It doesn’t matter whether your actions lean on the prestige or the dominating mindset, you always have to choose where to draw a morality and ethics line. You may, for example, brutally compete but never take illegal performance enhancing drugs. On the other hand, you may help people in your class to study, but cheat on your test nonetheless.

    We have laws that forbid harmful behavior, especially on the physical and material level, meaning they provide security to your body and personal property. But there are still many gray areas and harmful things that are allowed, especially on the emotional level, and different ways of unethically gaining new material things.

    You have to decide for yourself what’s right and what’s wrong after the law stops working.

    Another important decision is whether you will be more flexible or stubborn in your life. Will you push things to go your way no matter what or will you adapt to different circumstances? It’s a totally different life if you choose one or the other.

    There are several other things you have to decide about yourself, like how organized you will be, whether you will be more unique or follow trends, the level of your privacy, how you will deal with obstacles and so on.

    Take care of your body

    Taking care of your physical body and physical appearance

    Your body is like your digital avatar, a vessel carrying your soul so you can experience the material world. An important part of your life strategy is how well you will take care of your vessel/avatar (or body, if you want).

    The formula is very simple. The more you take care of your body, the better you look, the more energy you have, the longer you will probably live and so on. Taking care of your body is probably one of the best investments in your life strategy. And we all know that.

    Why don’t we all do it then? Because it’s not easy. Our body is a very complex mechanism and our mind even more so. Not taking care of your body gives you immediate gratification and consequences are seen only over the years.

    Eating that hamburger in front of the TV relaxes you immediately, but you only gain weight over time. Regularly taking care of your body has the opposite mental effect and take real effort. You have to invest and work hard and make sacrifices now at this moment, only to get results somewhere in the future.

    Therefore it’s not easy to take care of your body. Anyway, you do have to make a decision of how well and how regularly you will maintain your body. What will be your healthy living strategy? That includes everything from your diet, exercise and hygiene to choosing your personal style and appearance. To be even more specific, as part of your life strategy regarding your body, you have to at least make decisions about:

    • Your sleep schedule (how much you sleep, when do you go to sleep)
    • Your hygiene level
    • Your personal style
    • Your posture and body language
    • Your exercising strategy
    • Your relationship with food (diet)
    • Dealing with daily anxiety
    • Taking breaks and holidays (rest)
    • How often and regularly will you go to a doctor
    • Taking medicine and vaccination
    • Smoking / drinking / drugs
    • Detoxing yourself (fasting, technology detox)

    One more thing to mention here is your personal clothing style. Clothes are an important part of communicating who you are. Again it’s your choice how much you will emphasize your uniqueness. It’s on you to decide whether fashion and style will be a part of your life or not.

    Formal education

    At first, your formal education is strongly determined by your parents and the place where you live. The material status of your family also has a great influence on the quality of the formal schooling that you can get (private schools etc.). But sometime after high school, the level of formal education you will receive is, in most cases, completely up to you. Probably an even more important decision is which field you will choose.

    The more traditional that the career you want is, the more important is a high level of education. If you want to be a doctor, lawyer, scientist etc. formal education is very important. On the other side of the coin, many contemporary jobs don’t even demand high levels of formal education if you are good at a specific skill, like digital design or programming.

    Decisions about formal education are tough and many factors are involved. You should consider them all and then make the best decision that’s available to you. When making decisions about the level of your formal education, you should consider at least the following:

    • Market trends for different jobs
    • Importance of formal education in your chosen career
    • The field of study and subjects you will take and why
    • The college you will choose and in which state/country
    • Grades you will aim at
    • Scholarships, taking debt and total financial costs of schooling
    • Opportunity-cost of schooling (you could work, earn money and gain experience…)
    • Your payoff for investing into a higher level of formal education
    • How you will spend your free time outside the formal education process (partying, working, traveling, doing pro bono work…)

    You know that the costs of good formal education are getting higher and higher, while on the other hand, formal education is not a guarantee for getting a job anymore. You can find many different opinions and views on importance of formal education, especially if you should get yourself in debt to get a good formal education or not, but at the end of the day, it’s totally up to you.

    It depends on your life situation, your goals, the career you aim at, your strategy etc. You should systematically analyze it, think different scenarios over and then make a sound decision.

    Informal education and developing competences and skills

    We all know now that formal education is not enough to develop your competences and skills and thus achieve your maximum potential. You have to achieve your peak performance on your own. An important part of your life strategy is how much you will invest in acquiring knowledge and developing skills in addition to formal education.

    This one’s not about reading books and having meaningful conversations and so on, but about developing hard core knowledge and skills that can help you provide value to the market. It’s about knowledge, skills and talents you can sell on the market. It’s about certified or systematic courses you take that take a longer time to develop.

    • To what extent you will develop your competence level
    • Talents you have and will exploit
    • Knowledge you’ll acquire
    • Skills you’ll develop (programming, accounting, cooking…)
    • Soft skills you’ll develop (teamwork, leadership, sales, organization, EQ, SQ…)
    • Levels of creativity you will employ
    • Languages you’ll learn etc.

    Information intake

    Information intake and communicating strategy

    Besides formal and informal education, you constantly intake information and communicate. As the saying goes: you should watch what goes in and comes out of your mouth.

    In addition to that, there is another important fact and that is garbage in, garbage out. Therefore your information intake strategy is a very important part of your life. Things that you focus on grow, so you must be very careful on which information you will focus.

    The second thing is that as much as you have your personal fashion style, so you have your personal communication style. You should be aware of it and decide where you should make improvements and how to develop it to the full.

    Communication is a very important part of life and the better you are at communicating, the more you can achieve and the better you can resolve conflicts. Thus you should carefully consider how much you will invest in your own effective communication style.

    There is one more important thing you have to consider when it comes to your communication style. You may be shy and it probably has to do something with your past. Nevertheless when you are an adult and aware of it, shyness becomes your choice and can burden your life progress. Deal with it if necessary.

    • Level of listening to others
    • Books you read and how much you read
    • Personal infostructure: Media you consume – what and how much (TV, news, blogs, movies…)
    • Your communication style
    • The level to which you will develop your communication skills
    • Level of shyness / openness and how it goes together you being introvert or extrovert
    • Complimenting and criticizing others
    • Swearing and gossiping – yes or no and how much

    Your past and relationships with your primary family

    As mentioned before, you have to deal with your past to some extent and dealing with your primary family (meaning your mother, father, brother and sisters and even your grandparents) is also a part of this. If you had a loving home and you have the same values as your parents, then this may not be a big deal. It’s good if family really feels like family, the safest and the most loving environment.

    But that’s often not the case. In some cases the worst things that can happen to people are their parents. Families can be dysfunctional, love can be replaced with abuse and the values you have can be a complete opposite to those of your parents and siblings, from politics and religion to discipline and all other areas of life.

    In those cases, it’s very difficult to make a decision of how much and in what kind of a relationship you will be with your parents. Still, you have to decide.

    Another important part of your life strategy is how much you will lean on your long-time past, family history and bloodline. Well, if you are of royal blood, that’s definitely an important part of your life.

    If your ancestors came from another, completely different country or even continent, it can also be an important part of your life. Many people decide to explore their history and roots and look for strong history traits to lean on. How important your family history is to you is your choice.

    Every one of us has also experienced more or less shocking events in the past that can become a burden in our lives. Mistakes your parents made, accidents that happen, unfortunate events etc. We all have such shocking events in life and have to deal with them somehow. How we will deal with the negative situations of our past is a part of our life strategy.

    • How much you will keep in touch with your parents
    • How close you will be to your parents
    • How much you will keep in touch with your siblings / grandparents / relatives
    • How close you will be to your siblings / grandparents / relatives
    • The level of leaning on your family history, ancestors and bloodline
    • Dealing with unfortunate events from your childhood and youth
    • Which family patterns you will strengthen and which demolish
    • Making a decision about when you will move out of your primary home

    Intimate relationships and your secondary family

    The spouse you will choose to spend the rest of your life with will have the biggest influence on your life. You are very much shaped by people who surround you and your intimate partner is number one in this regard.

    There are also many things you have to decide before and after committing to one person. Before that you have to decide how serious you will be about relationships, to what extent does finding the right partner lie in your hands and to what extent is this the domain of a “higher power” and so on. What qualities will you look for in your partner, how much emphasis will you give to physical looks, what are the deal breakers, how long will you stay in dysfunctional relationships and so on.

    The clearer the picture that you have about what you want, the easier it will be to make decisions. But of course if you believe that a greater power must take care of your love life, you will be much less proactive. Tough decisions never end.

    Even after getting into a relationship, you again have certain behavioral patterns and decisions you have to make and be aware of. How you see traditional gender roles, how much you will invest into a partnership, what you want to get out of it, is marriage important to you and so on.

    Your attitude towards cheating and missteps is also an important part of intimate relationships. It’s not easy to spend decades with the same person and you have to decide if it’s worth it and what kind of mistakes you’re willing to tolerate.

    Together with your partner you will have to decide what kind of a family you want to create. You have to decide how organized, loving, safe, caring etc. your family will be. You have to choose what kind of a home you will create, how you will decorate it, which rituals you will celebrate, who will do which chores and so on. If you didn’t have a choice with how your primary home looked, now you have it.

    • Is love in your hands or in the hands of a greater power?
    • Your dating strategy
    • Qualities you look for in your partner (personality traits, common hobbies…)
    • Is a partnership fixed or can it grow?
    • The extent of traditional gender roles and gender equality at home
    • Home chores
    • The importance of a formal marriage
    • Breaking-up attitude in partnership and ending marriage if necessary
    • Morality in partnership
    • Your personal life and privacy in relationships (will you share everything to your partner…)
    • The financial aspect of a household
    • Sex life

    Intimate relationships

    Your sex life

    Right after your intimate relationships, it makes sense to mention your sex life as well. I know sex is a very primary force and we act on instinct, but we can still control a big part of our sex life with the decisions we make.

    If we listen only to our instinct, we are on autopilot that’s maybe not even leading us to our true goals. As mentioned, even if we don’t have a strategy, we have some sort of a strategy. In this case having no strategy means yielding to our urges. But to have the best sex of your life, you have to do much more than that.

    Regarding your sex life, you will have to make the following decisions:

    • Satisfaction with your own body and your attitude towards nudity
    • Openness about your sexual orientation
    • Approximate number of sex partners you want to have
    • How regularly you want to have sex in your life
    • How well you have to know a person to have sex with them
    • How much effort you will put into pleasing your partner and how much you want to receive
    • How much is sex a part of love and how much it can be only fun
    • Kinks you have and want to make happen
    • All the things you want to experience and try in your sex life
    • Tools and techniques you will use to spice up your sex life (toys, poses…)
    • Dealing with negative emotions regarding your sex life (guilt, shame…)
    • Your attitude towards pornography
    • Your attitude towards prostitution

    Relationship with your kids

    The relationship you have with your kids is probably the most sensitive and responsible part of your life strategy. You create a new life and you have the power to break or make an innocent person. Nobody lives an easy life, but you can make a decision of how much love and support you will offer to your kids and how you will make their life more beautiful and fulfilling; or not.

    Thus an important part of your life strategy is choosing why you will have kids, how many of them you will have and how you will raise them. Some people have kids for the economic benefit (poorer countries), some to fill their emotional gaps, others to create a loving family and pass on what they’ve learned in life and prepare kids for their own challenges. There are many reasons why to have kids and you will have to find your own. Both having kids and not having them can be the most selfish thing you do in life, depending on your why’s and how’s.

    • The number of kids you want to have in life
    • Reasons to have kids in life
    • How will you raise your kids (and how you will not raise them)
    • The amount of time you spent with your kids
    • Financial and other support you will offer to your kids
    • How well will you prepare your kids for life challenges
    • What will you do if for some reason you can’t have kids (adoption etc.)
    • Helping and empowering misfortune children

    Money and investment strategy

    I probably don’t have to emphasize that being able to acquire and keep assets is one of key skills in life and everybody has to deal with it, whether you want to or not. Some people love it, others hate it. It’s pretty much the same with money as it is with diet and health. Instant gratification messes up our rationality and plans.

    The wealth of your primary family and the money blueprint you’ve inherited have an important influence on how you will shape your strategy for dealing with money. But at the end of the day, it’s once again a question of mastering yourself and making choices.

    First you have to decide how you will make your income by providing value. You can either be employed, self-employed, a business owner or an investor.

    You have to decide how much money you will spend and how much money you will invest in order to gain passive and portfolio income. To do that, you need a savings and investment strategy. You have to deal with debt, curb your buying decisions and much more. If you are born poor, it’s not your fault, but if you die poor, it probably is your fault. If you decide for the latter, be aware that you’ve chosen it yourself.

    • How will you make money (employed, self-employed, business owner, investor)
    • Types of earnings (active income, passive income, portfolio income)
    • Will your income come from wealth creation or welath extortion or both
    • The balance between monetary and social value created
    • Insurance strategy
    • Saving strategy
    • Investment strategy
    • Debt strategy
    • Donating
    • Buying / Renting home
    • Luxuries you will afford
    • How long you will keep things (living minimalist life or not)
    • Inheritance strategy (receiving from your parents and giving to your kids)
    • Joint assets with your partner (to what extent)
    • Attitude towards government and taxes (optimizing taxes etc.)

    Career strategy

    Your money and earning potential are very much connected to your career, achievements and social status. First of all, your career strategy depends on your ambitions. The more ambitious you are, the more sound and superior a strategy you need in terms of career and in all other areas of life.

    You have to decide whether you will be a leader or a follower. You have to decide about the industries you want to contribute to and work in, the type of organizations you want to function in, whether you want to start your own business, whether you’d like to have business partners and so on.

    Your career also strongly depends on your execution and political skills. The bigger the organization you work for and the closer to the government you are, the more political skills you need. And you can either use political skills to do good or to manipulate for personal gain only. Again, it’s a part of your strategy and choice. Your advancement in career is also very much connected to your personal marketing and sales strategy.

    • Level of your ambitions
    • Leader or follower
    • Industries you want to work in
    • Type of organizations you want to work for (size, type, profit/non-profit…)
    • Starting your own business – yes or no
    • Business partner strategy
    • Relationships with authorities
    • Political skills
    • Execution skills
    • Personal marketing strategy – how aggressive you will be with personal marketing

    Your social strategy

    We are social animals. We cannot survive without other people. Relationships fulfill us and make us happy. Nevertheless some people are introverts, others are extroverts. Some people prefer business relationships, others personal. Some people like to do sports with friends, others like to only have fun.

    You need to know what social relationships mean to you, how much you are prepared to invest into relationships and what do you want to get out of them.

    It’s also no secret that you can benefit from having good social skills and developing strong social connections. It’s called acquiring social capital and it’s a part of your social strategy. The people you want to get to know, how you will make sure that people hear about you, who will you spend time with, who are you going to call when you’re in trouble and need something, all these are important questions you should find an answer to for yourself.

    • Introvert / Extrovert
    • Business / Personal Relationships
    • When and why to socialize
    • People you will spend most of your time with (who, their character, deal breakers…)
    • How often you will change your friends and social circles
    • Social intelligence and social skills
    • Social capital and networking strategy
    • Your social life online
    • Who will you call in times of trouble
    • Who can help you in different areas of life
    • How much you will invest into helping your friends

    Hobbies and having fun strategy

    According to my beliefs, we are here on this planet to (1) create, (2) learn and (3) have fun. Therefore hobbies, relaxation and having fun are also a part of your life strategy. Decisions on this area of life should be easy since we all love to have fun, but they are not always.

    You have to make important decision, how much time will you spend on your hobbies and having fun and how much on developing your career and being responsible adult dealing with all important obligations.

    The line between how much you should invest into your future and how much fun you want to have is conflicting, especially in your youth. In my opinion it should be “and” not “or” and while doing that, keeping the balance. But again, you have to find the right answer for yourself.

    • What relaxes you and how often you will relax
    • How much free time will you have in life? (work – life balance)
    • How do you spend your free time?
    • Hobbies you are going to try and do in life
    • Alcohol, drugs and other substances use / abuse
    • Games and gambling affinity
    • How much you smile

    Travel

    Travel and transportation strategy

    First of all, you need all kinds of transport in your life, moving from home to work and vice versa, traveling to different destinations and so on. You have to decide whether you will own a car or not, how safe your driving style will be, how much you will spend on your car, whether you will have one or two cars in your household and so on.

    Car is usually the second biggest expense besides your home. If you decide not to own a car, you need to have a transportation strategy, especially how to use public transport and how much money to spend on it.

    The desire to travel around the world is also a part of human nature. You have to decide where you want to travel, which countries you want to see and why. Whether it’s because of the culture, the nature or everything. Maybe you have a limited budget but if the desire is strong enough, you will find a way. In my youth, I never had a budget to travel personally, so I combined travelling for business with pleasure.

    • Car decisions (number of cars in household, how much to spend on car etc.)
    • Is car a status symbol for you or not
    • Your driving style
    • Use of public transportation
    • Countries you want to travel to
    • How much to travel, travel budget, with whom to travel
    • Why you want to travel
    • How you will finance your travels
    • Business / personal travels

    Home and your surroundings strategy

    One of the biggest costs in your life will be buying/renting and arranging your home. Thus it’s not only a tough decision to make, but also a very expensive one. Nevertheless you have to choose where you want to live sooner or later in your life, from which country and which city to choosing between a house and a flat or maybe even a boat if you prefer living on the sea.

    After choosing your home, you also have to decide how you will decorate it. It’s part of a creative process, where you of course want to make your surroundings to your liking. You should feel as good as possible in your home.

    You also have some influence on how your office will look. Thus you have to make a decision of how will you decorate it and maybe even install some elements to support you at your goals, like a Kanban board or something.

    • Where do you want to live (county, state, countryside, city…)?
    • House / Flat and size of your home
    • City / Countryside
    • Your home and its interior design
    • Your office design
    • Tidiness and cleanliness of your surroundings (order, creative chaos,…)

    Strategy toward animals and nature

    We are a part of nature, the planet Earth is basically a symbolical mother of us all. And we share this world with animals. Therefore you have to decide on your standpoint towards nature and animals.

    There are some very tough decisions to make and there are no easy answers, especially when it comes to global warming, waste and other damage we do to our planet. To balance that, you have to make more pleasant decisions in life as well, like whether you want to own pets, how nature relaxes you the most and so on.

    • Owning pets
    • Eating animals and animal products – yes or no
    • Keeping animals in captivity (circus, zoo etc.)
    • Supporting animals in shelters and issues regarding animals close to extinction
    • Dealing with dangerous or annoying animals (beasts, insects…)
    • Global warming and other related issues
    • Using or overusing natural resources (electricity, water…)
    • Personal waste management and level of tidiness
    • Relaxing in nature (where, how, do you prefer mountains, forests…)

    Art and culture

    Culture and art have a great influence on our lives, even if it’s not that obvious anymore, especially due to all the instant pop culture. Nevertheless, art and culture fulfill our lives, make us more human, creative, understanding and civilized.

    If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint (or do any other kind of art). E. Hopper

    Art is a way of reaching our hearts and expressing ourselves in both ways, be it as creators of art or consumers. Still we have to make a decision about the extent to which we will let culture and art influence our lives.

    • Subcultures you decide to belong to
    • Cultural rituals you decide to follow
    • Values you take from your culture (religious, national…)
    • Using symbols in your personal and professional life
    • Music you listen to
    • Expressing yourself in artistic ways (drawing, painting, sculpting, dancing…)
    • Traditions you will strengthen and traditions you will demolish
    • Your personal style

    Technology

    Using technology and your digital trail strategy

    In the last century, technology has become an important part of our lives and it will have an even bigger influence in the future. Technology is a tool like fire: you can cook a meal with it or you can burn yourself.

    In much the same way some people see technology as the biggest enemy of humanity and others see it as the biggest savior. The fact is that technology is here and you will have to decide how big of an affinity you will have for it and how you will benefit from using it.

    The second fact is that the more you use technology, the more of a digital trail you leave. It seems like you are living two lives, the real one and the digital one. Most people can be googled and “facebooked”. Digital life will stay online even after you die. Therefore you’ll have to decide what kind of a digital trail you’ll leave behind you.

    • Your attitude towards technology
    • Technology skills you will develop and invest into
    • Applications you will use in your everyday life
    • How often you will unplug yourself from the online world (digital detox)
    • Your digital life strategy and management
    • Your attitude towards artificial intelligence
    • Convergence of human tissue and technology
    • Using robots to do work

    Your nation, country and political system

    Virtual lines drawn on the map were an important part of life for the past three millennia. Now the world is becoming more and more flat and connected. You will have to decide how loyal you want to be to your country and which political system you see as the best option.

    You have to decide how much of government intervention you think is adequate, whether you are pro military or against it, what your opinion about taxes is and how much you will optimize your government contributions (your taxes).

    • Belonging to your country
    • Political issues (capitalism, socialism…)
    • Racial issues
    • Military issues
    • Taxes and government intervention
    • Economic inequality
    • Conspiracy theories

    Spirituality, religion and asking for help

    Religion is maybe even one of taboo topics, especially because you could feel guilty if you have different religious beliefs than your parents or the majority of people in your country/area do.

    But again, at the end of the day, it’s about your life and you will have to decide if you believe in god and how strict you will be at following your god’s word and religious rules.

    You can be a good person and atheist and you can be very religious and do harm to others for personal gain (think Italian mafia). What you believe is actually a part of your reality and your right. In my view the only important thing is that you aren’t doing any harm to other people and breaking any laws, no matter what your religious beliefs are.

    While people more or less do respect religious beliefs, it’s a little bit different with spirituality. Maybe yoga and meditation have quite a good reputation, but you have many practices that are considered strange and fake. At the end of the day, it’s again up to you what you believe and if it helps you to live a better life, why not.

    You have to decide about your attitude towards spiritual things, from astrology and bioenergy to fortune telling and even ghosts. As mentioned before, if you believe in it, it’s probably a part of your reality and you have a complete right to it.

    Here is one more important thing I have to mention and you have to decide on. An important part of your strategy is whether you will ask for help, who you will ask for help and when and how comfortable do you feel that other people do work instead of you.

    Never forget that if you don’t create value, someone else has to create it for you; how acceptable is that to you? How much do you think you have to care for yourself and how much you think your parents, government or even God should help you? Are you prepared to go begging if necessary? How difficult does your situation have to be in order for you to ask other people for help and is your honour in conflict with asking for help?

    • Believing in god
    • Your religious beliefs (belonging to a religion, changing family religion…)
    • Are we alone in the universe?
    • Believing in supernatural forces
    • Engaging in spiritual activities (meditation, fortunetelling, astrology, ghost calling…)
    • When will you ask other people for help?
    • How much will you depend on others and how much will you rely on yourself?
    • How do you feel about other people doing work instead of you or to serve you?

    Taking care of your emotional body

    There is a special reason why I’ve dedicated an entire headline to an emotional body. It’s because emotions color our lives. Emotions drive and fuel our passions. Emotions take us to life’s highs and lows. Emotions are the main reason why we can inspire and lead other people. Still we usually understand our physical body and our mind much better than our emotional body, especially men.

    A part of your life strategy is how good your connection with emotions will be and whether you’ll use emotions as positive guidelines in life or you will see them as a burden. How much you will show your emotions and how well you will engage the emotions of other people is a part of your life strategy.

    • Being connected to your emotions
    • Expressing your emotions
    • Emotional intelligence
    • Confronting with your fears (being courageous or living a life in an emotional cage)

    Evil

    Dealing with enemies, bad and evil in the world

    Evil is the saddest but very realistic part of our world. There is evil in all of us, but since times are becoming more and more transparent and survivable, we also tend to curb the evil in us. Nevertheless, there are still horror stories that are happening daily, terrible things like war, rape, abuse, murder, terrorism and so on.

    It’s a part of life we cannot deny, no matter how much we want to. Maybe (I hope not) you’ll even have to deal with some of these horror stories at some point in your life. And it’s not only about you. Will you, for example, stand up for people who are going through hell at this very moment?

    There are also lighter negative aspects of this world you have to face more often. People you love will die, you may have an accident or face other types of burden and sorrow. Besides that, everyone has enemies, you have people in your life who are prepared to argue with you and if not that, negotiate with you or sue you.

    A part of your life strategy is how you will protect yourself and how much you will fight, run or let things go. Which battles do you plan to choose? It’s not easy but it’s also worth to consider how you will deal with tougher situations that can or will happen in your life (loss, failures…). Think about how you will handle them.

    • Dealing with your inner evil
    • Dealing with personal tragedies
    • Dealing with evil in the world
    • Strategy for owning arms
    • Negative attitudes and opinions from others
    • Your negotiation strategy
    • Your arguing level strategy (how far will you go, how much will you quarrel etc.)
    • Your personal legal protection

    Your legacy and giving back strategy

    We’ve talked about asking for help, but you should also consider giving help. You have to decide how altruistic you will be and how much of your resources you will invest into making the world a better place to live for all of us.

    You have to decide what causes you will fight for and how you want to influence the world in a positive way. A part of your life strategy is to choose whether you will donate money or not and whether you will spend your free time volunteering or not.

    Politics is also a part of your social engagement and legacy. Maybe going into politics is actually even the best way, besides donating money, to influence the quality of life on this planet in the future.

    When we talk about politics, it all starts with voting and continues with supporting different political parties or even joining them or running for different functions. In this case, it’s not so much about career advancement as it is about sincere interest to do good and leave the generations to come a better place to live.

    The third thing you have to consider is your life legacy. One legacy that you’ll leave behind is your digital footprint, but is that enough? Do you want to make any bigger contributions to art, science, sports or any other area or life?

    Do you want to change the course of your family or maybe fight passionately for a specific cause that will make the world a better place? There are many problems in this world you can fight against, from poverty, famine, child abuse to deadly diseases etc.

    Do you want to be an example of a successful person in business? What do you want to be remembered for the most? Answering this question is also a very important part of your life strategy.

    • Your contribution to art, science, sports, business and other areas
    • Social and service organizations
    • Donating money and time to charity
    • Involvement in politics (voting, running)
    • Attitude toward world problems
    • Things you want to leave behind and how you want to be remembered the most
    • Thing you will create and fight for

    When do you want to give up?

    The final thing you have to decide on in the course of your life is when you want to give up. Some people never want to stop working, others dream about retiring from day one at the job. Again, it’s about you, your values and your decisions.

    In addition to that, the older you are, the more health issues and risks you have to face. At the end you have to decide how long you will try to prolong your life and what your attitude towards death will be.

    How afraid are you and what are your beliefs concerning what happens after death? Is it all over, do you reincarnate, do you go to heaven or hell or something else? Maybe it’s part of your religion, maybe what you feel happens after death is completely your personal decision, but you have to believe something, there is no other way.

    Your attitude towards death and the afterlife is a very important belief and a part of your life strategy, since it can influence all other decisions you make in different areas of life. Nevertheless it’s quite obvious that all religious belief systems as well as non-religious systems try to influence you to be as good of a person as possible, despite the fact that life is neither easy nor fair.

    • Retiring from work
    • Trying to prolong your life
    • Your attitude toward death
    • Beliefs about afterlife
    • How good a person you will be in life

    We’ve looked at 24 different elements of your life strategy. I am sure there are still some minor things I’ve forgotten about. Still, if you analyze your beliefs and build a strong and superior life strategy for all the mentioned areas of life, I’m sure you’ll be very well off.

    Knowing who you are and clearly knowing what you want out of life is an integral part and the first step towards a superior life strategy.

    But it’s not an easy task. If it were easy, everyone would live a happy and successful life. Knowing who you are and clearly knowing what you want out of life is an integral part and the first step towards a superior life strategy.

    The main purpose of this 24-areas framework is to help you shape your own superior life strategy that will lead you towards experiencing as much as possible in your written life vision.

    Homework
    Template

    Do the exercise

    Below you can find a spreadsheet with all the bullet point from this article. It will help you systematically analyze your beliefs, your life strategy, show you where you are missing information and which areas you are strong in. You should write down your thoughts, goals and intentions at the end of every row.

    [sociallocker]

    AgileLeanLife – Life Strategy Template (xls)

    [/sociallocker]

    In the second step ask yourself the following for every single thing that you have written down: why?

    • Why do I believe that?
    • Why do I want to live my life like that?
    • Where does that come from?
    • Is that truly me?
    • Do I know enough about it or should I read more before I make my final decision?
    • Does it lead me towards my goals?
    • Am I doing something good for myself, the people I love and humanity in general as well as for nature and maybe even other living beings?
    • How would my life look like with a different kind of belief and strategy?
    • Where could I make improvements?

    Happy thinking and analyzing.

  • The Search Mode

    One of the ways to learn about yourself and the world is the so-called “search mode”. The better you know yourself and your environment, the better you can execute, and consequently achieve your true goals that much faster.

    In order to get to know yourself and your environment, as well as build up an adequate life strategy, you have to first do enough searching, experimenting and trying, since all that leads to understanding and insights. Based on that, you can start executing and making sound decisions.

    As you can see in many action movies, when the super team steps into action, the first order they always get from their command officer is “Gather intel”.

    In the search mode, you make assumptions and test different options. In the execution mode, you constantly perform and optimize what you preserve from the search mode.

    There are two main reasons why you want to introduce the search mode into your life:

    Wrong assumptions are the mother of all fuckups and execution based on wrong assumptions means nothing but failure, sorrow and obstacles. Reality (the objective reality) is significantly different from your assumptions and your own interpretation of reality (the subjective reality). You want to come as close to the objective reality as possible.

    The difference between what you think is valuable to you and what really is valuable to you in your life creates waste. One of your tasks when living an AgileLeanLife is to eliminate all waste by finding out what really brings value for you. You don’t want to live life based on wrong assumptions of what you like or expectations of other people.

    You learn three important things in the search mode:

    You learn about yourself

    You learn about yourself as a person, what you want in life, your true desires, fears, who you are and where your talents lie, your current capabilities and so on.

    You want to get a very clear picture of who you are and what you want.

    You learn about your environment, the world and the society

    We all live our own lives as well as the common destiny of the world and the smaller environments we live in (country, company…).

    In the search mode you experiment in order to learn the basics of how the world works, how people behave (from the aspect of biology to the aspect of psychology), and so on. You learn how to build an environment that supports you and how you can create as much value as possible for other people.

    You learn how to build an environment that supports you and how you can create as much value as possible for other people.

    You learn about the markets

    Markets always win. You don’t want to play against the market. Therefore you want to understand the trends and movements on the market, be it the labor market, the dating market, financial markets etc. Markets are like turbo accelerators on your car. They can help you advance really fast.

    But first you have to learn how to drive a car, which means learning enough about the previous two points.

    The better you understand all three, the greater the potential you unlock in your life. Therefore in an AgileLeanLife, you have to divide all activities of all areas of life into two groups:

    Here are some additional reasons for why you need the search phase before doing any real execution:

    • To do adequate research and form first assumptions about yourself and life
    • To conduct small experiments and figure out what your best personal fits are
    • To not put pressure on yourself to achieve and do something that’s not really you
    • To have fun and try as many things as possible
    • To set a realistic execution strategy that you can follow and really implement

    Once we become adults we assume that the time for searching, exploring and learning is over. But that is a completely wrong approach. You should never stop experimenting and learning about yourself and the world.

    No goals, just learning

    In the search mode, you shouldn’t have any expectations, you shouldn’t make any commitments and you shouldn’t do any hard work. Expectations lead to and before you understand something, your expectations are definitely completely wrong.

    Commitments lead to heavy energy investments, and you shouldn’t be investing before you know what you are truly investing in and whether the investment really fits your character. Hard work should always also be smart work, but you can’t work smartly if you don’t have the right map and coordinates.

    In the search phase, you just try, experiment, observe, reflect and learn about yourself and the world. The most important thing in this phase is to have no fixed ideas and no expectations at all.

    Your job is only to test the assumptions you have written down, correct them, and try different things in order to find out what suits you best This phase is only for learning about yourself and the world. No goals. No measurement of progress. Just learning and playing.

    After you find your fit in the search phase, you start executing. You set a big vision, strong foundations, have laser focus, commit fully, start working hard and achieving your goals. You optimize, improve and measure your progress. But first, you have to find the right thing. You must put the ladder against the right wall before you start climbing.

    It doesn’t make sense to set deadlines for being skinny and fit until you understand your body, metabolism, your favorite sports, what kind of a diet suits you best etc. It doesn’t make sense to make deadlines for being rich if you don’t have enough financial knowledge, don’t know how to increase your earning potential and which financial investments suit you best etc.

    It doesn’t make sense to make plans for getting married after a second date, when you don’t even know the person next to you and how you two function together.

    Before making any real execution plan you should learn, talk with people, try different things, test, experiment and write down your insights. After that you will be able to execute perfectly.

    You have to do it scientifically

    The search mode is all nice and fun with the right approach (it can be scary but more about that later). There is one big catch, however. You have to do it scientifically and systematically.

    No goals, no pressure, just discovery, but you have to make sure that you are really learning about yourself and the world. Learning can become an easy excuse for failure. And you don’t want to fail.

    If you have learned something new, you haven’t failed in the search mode. If you haven’t learned anything new, you’ve failed big time and wasted resources on top of that. But how do you know whether you’ve learned something new or not?

    Very easily, namely by setting and testing hypotheses. We call that validated learning. Let’s look at an example.

    You want to get in better shape. The formula for getting in shape is pretty easy. You have to eat less, the food has to be of higher quality, and you have to exercise more. No greater secret. But there are many ways for doing that. Based on knowing yourself, you start making some assumptions and then testing them.

    Experiment

    Practical examples

    Example of assumptions about exercising

    H1: I prefer individual sports over team sports. I will try two individual and two team sports. (Validated)

    H2: The individual sports that suit me best are fitness, running and boxing. I will also try crossfit, golf, judo and hiking.

    (Validated – with one exception: I like hiking more than boxing)

    H3: Since I’m in bad shape, it’s enough if I start exercising two times per week. I will try to do it three times for the first time and see how it feels.

    (Rejected – I can work out three times per week without a problem. Will try four times after one month)

    H4: I will make better progress with a personal trainer and I have the money to afford it.

    (Validated – Personal trainers show me how to do exercises right and boost my motivation. After two months, I will see how well I work alone, following a new program prepared by a personal trainer)

    H5: My motivation is better if I have a pairing buddy to work out with.

    (Rejected – Scheduling, talking, drinks after the workout, it’s not really helping me)

    H6: I now have enough knowledge to set serious goals about my fitness progress. I will make a 3-month program and measure how I am doing.

    (Rejected – I need more time to adjust my body to exercising. I will enjoy it without any serious goals. Will try again after three months).

    It’s more or less the same with dieting assumptions (or any other for that matter). You have to see your body’s reaction to cutting down calories, decreasing the consumption of sugar, finding the veggies that you like the most etc. For some people, eating at night is a catastrophe, for others it’s no big deal. After a few months of experimenting, you will find the right diet for you, the right activities and after that you can do some fine-tuning and additional adjustments.

    The main point is to write down what you have learned (especially when doing reflections). That way you won’t feel like you’re running in place but you will see your progress. You will also focus on things that work.

    Finding the right fit will enable you to really change your lifestyle and become healthy in the long term, not just go on a diet and gain back all the weight afterwards, according to the yo-yo effect.

    After searching and trying and finding the right fit, changing your lifestyle is fun and easy. That is what the search phase is all about; getting excited about the changes that you will make in your life and finding the right things that will not lead to a loss of motivation after only a few weeks.

    But you have to do it gradually and scientifically to some extent.

    The Search Mode

    Your life is like a puzzle you have to build

    By knowing what you want, how the world works and what markets need, you can put together all the pieces of life that suit you best, and build the right strategy. You can compose your masterpiece life puzzle, your dream life.

    Your job in the search mode is to find the perfect diet for yourself, the best career to serve the world and provide real value for it, the relationships that empower you the most, the best computer operating system for you (or whatever), the things that you enjoy the most in life, and so on.

    What suits you best may be a waste for someone else. And vice versa. You have to search for what fits you best.

    There are four more goals you have to achieve in the search phase besides validated learning:

    Acquiring the best knowledge possible

    The rule of an AgileLeanLife is to go straight to the best knowledge there is and then adjust it to your life. For every life area, there are only a few key points you have to know and master, and then practice them regularly.

    To go straight to the top, you have to learn and mirror the people at the top. You can easily get lost in crappy content in today’s post-information age.

    Setting strong foundations

    The bigger the skyscraper you want to build, the stronger you need to make the foundations. Implementing the best knowledge into your life requires extraordinarily strong foundations.

    You set a strong foundation by making small linear changes and then accumulating them into rapid big changes or quantum leaps. The key principle of the AgileLeanLife is to really master a few things that are the building blocks of strong foundations.

    You can build your skyscraper floor by floor on that. Strong foundations mean nothing else but mastering yourself and your environemnt.

    You won’t get more fit if you can’t skip dessert and exercise a few times per week. You won’t get rich if you don’t learn to increase your earning potential and spend less than you earn. You won’t find your dream career if you are obsessed with a current secure job.

    Setting strong foundations means mastering yourself and you can do that in the search mode by testing and experimenting and consequently building up your will and stamina (being in the search mode means handling uncertainty).

    Preparing a plan for execution and daily application

    When you find your fit in the search mode, you have to start making a shift into the execution mode. For the execution, you need discipline to perform daily tasks that lead you to your goal. Search mode should help you get insight into how fast you can progress and what realistic expectations are.

    In AgileLeanLife practices, you execute in intervals (sprints) and after every sprint you make a reflection and adjust the plan. Your first execution plan when going from the search into the execution mode will be the worst and you have to be aware of that.

    Thus you need to make constant adjustments to your plan during regularly scheduled reflections. Learn more how to organize yourself with to-do lists.

    Interacting with other people

    In the search phase, you should interact with people who have achieved the same things you want to achieve as well as with people who have views totally different from your own. Talk with them, try to understand them.

    Try to walk a mile in their shoes. Imagine your life and your decisions if you were to live with those kind of values. Broaden your horizons and test things that don’t come naturally to you. That approach will help you manage your own expectations and expectations of others in life.

    The search phase is the phase of constant tests and experiments. The really big problem is that testing is not your natural state, because it lacks security, because it contains the unknown. Trying something new can be scary from time to time.

    But you know you need guts to live an amazing life. Nothing worthwhile in life comes easily. In the search phase, you have to constantly keep trying out something new, fail over and over again, and do things that you haven’t mastered yet. As already said, that is scary.

    But it can also be fun. If you are consciously in the search mode and you carefully define your downsides and upsides, shape an adequate strategy and focus on validated learning rather than on the outcome, then the search phase becomes the fun life experience all in itself.

    A big plus of today’s world is that you can experiment without risking your life or lives of others (in most cases; and where such kind of danger exists, you should avoid it). There is no lion behind the corner that’s going to eat you if you try new ways. You have the tools, knowledge and examples. Thus it’s time for you to start scientifically and systematically testing and learning about yourself and the world.

    Every test should be seen as a life experience, part of your life vision. After performing the test, you should know more about yourself, the world and the society. In some cases even about the markets. If something new works for you, great. If it doesn’t, you should discard it and look for clues on which experiment to do next. That’s called pivot.

    There are two main goals for testing and experimenting in the search phase:

    1. Looking for your best fits so you can start building your dream life
    2. Trying, experimenting and testing more and more new things, so you can not only improve but also experience as much as possible. Testing and experiencing new things is the best way to not live a dull and routine life.

    The sum of all desired experiences is the vision of your life. You should have a list of potential ideas and constantly brainstorm for new ideas and possibilities. You can choose priority experiments for every interval.

    In order to test as many things as possible the concept of Minimum Viable Experience can help.

    Reflection in the search mode

    After every experiment you do in the search phase, you have to make a reflection. That is the most valuable part of the process. Before marking a hypothesis as validated or rejected, you should ask yourself about what you have learned, what you will test next, how you will change your plans, and so on. A search mode without deep and systematic reflection has very little value.

    You learn about yourself by reflecting on your actions. Reflection is an insight into knowing yourself and life better. Never forget that reflection is actually an insight into how to do things in a better way. Therefore if you want to be more successful, effective and efficient, you have to find better ways to do things for you personally, by experimenting and reflecting.

    You should also remember that insights only come to a relaxed and rested mind that’s prepared to think about the experience that had happened.

    Never stop searching for new ways

    You never know whether you’ve reached your local maximum in life and where other, even bigger maximums are. That is why you should constantly be in the search mode, even when you had already switched to the execution mode and vice versa. It’s just the emphasis that’s different.

    Local maximum
    Achieving local maximum. But is there a higher hill to climb?

    In the search mode, you make assumptions and test different options. In the execution mode, you constantly perform and optimize what you preserve from the search mode. But even when executing, you should test new things from time to time. And in the search mode, you are already doing execution in a way.

    For the end, another important thing. Because all living beings, including you, don’t like change by nature, you should not implement too many experiments and changes at once. From the macro perspective, the whole search mode must be limited to the point at which you can still measure what’s happening with your life, what works for you and what doesn’t.

    Our willpower is a weak muscle, thus all experiments and changes should be made in a systematic and controllable way. And you should have as much fun as possible on the way.

  • The ways of getting to know yourself

    You become a successful entrepreneur not because you know how to build a company, but because you have a superior understanding of the customers and their needs. You can simply hire people for everything else (very simplified). It’s the same in your personal life. If you want to be really successful and happy in life, you have to know who you are and what you want very clearly and also understand your environment in order to build the superior strategy for achieving your life vision.

    Knowing yourself is one of the most important things in life. It’s the first step. It’s also the most important foundation of the AgileLeanLife lifestyle. In life, you either follow your own goals or goals of other people. But if you want to follow your own goals, you must first know what you truly want and how you function as a person.

    Most really successful people had known what they wanted to become from a very young age. They discovered what they’re good at early in their lives and devoted their life to that one thing with all their passion and focus. Well, even if it doesn’t happen early in life, it happens at some point. When the right opportunity comes, you simply know you were born to do that with your life.

    You can unlock your true potential when you get the insights in your true self: not only into what you want, but also into how you function, what your psychological survival mechanisms are, your desires and fears, strengths and weaknesses and other personality traits, how the environment works, what are the upcoming trends and paradigms, then you can unlock your true potential. If you want to transcend, you have to first understand yourself.

    There are several ways for getting to know yourself. Let’s look at them.

    People and activities you like

    The first one is very obvious. People with the same values always group together. People who surround you and you like to hang out with usually have the same beliefs, values, likes and hobbies as you do.

    We all know that, but what you can do to systematically get to know yourself is to carefully analyze who are the people you like and what activities do you do together. Same goes for the activities you like to do alone. Think of your hobbies and why you like them. Ask yourself what topic you would like to teach if you had an opportunity or what you would love to blog about.

    You are and become more and more similar to the people you are spending your time with. Analyze the people who surround you.

    Your values

    Your values very clearly show what’s important to you in life. But here’s the trick. Your values are not what you say is important to you, but how you allocate your time, money and energy. For example, if you have to decide between working out and going to the pub and you choose the latter, socializing is more important to you than health. If you have to decide between spending time with your spouse or friends and you choose the former, your partnership is more important to you than your friends. And so on.

    Carefully analyze how you’re spending your time, money, energy and other resources. When do you say no and to whom, and how do you make a choice between two different activities. Analyzing that will clearly show you your personal values. You can also help yourself with this value list and then prioritize chosen values based on your decision-making system.

    You may find out one very painful thing, namely the inconsistency of what you say you value and what you actually do. But don’t torture yourself. There are no wrongs and rights. It’s about really knowing yourself and living life true to yourself. That kind of exercise helps you develop integrity and honesty.

    Your talents and fields of interest

    When you are analyzing yourself, a very pleasant part of it is analyzing your talents and fields of interest. Every single one of us has talents, things that we are naturally good at, and so do you. May it be sports, mathematics, some sort of arts or anything else. Each of us has special talents and gifts. This is also where one of your greatest potentials lies, be it financially or in self-actualization terms.

    Think about the subjects you liked when attending school, which activities were natural to you and you had to put in much less effort than other people, which activities make you lose sense of time and you simply enjoy them, what are your hobbies and so on. But also go one step further with your analysis. Think about all different kinds of strengths that accompany your talents.

    A good tool to do that kind of analysis is the so-called SWOT analysis. You analyze your strengths on the one hand and weaknesses on the other. You also analyze opportunities and threats as outside factors that can influence your ability to achieve your goals and desires. Much as you have to be aware of your advantages, so you have to be aware of your disadvantages as well.

    People you hate

    It may not seem that obvious, but we can really learn a lot from people we hate or dislike. We always dislike people who have personality traits that are a part of our character yet unresolved (we deny them) or that remind us of a bad experience we had had in our past. Additionally, we usually also have values very different from those of people we don’t like.

    Nevertheless, there are two different states or situations. We can have different beliefs and values from people and have neutral feelings about it. That is what we call rational behavior. People have different views on life and there is nothing wrong with it. Every one of us has the right to live life as they want, as long as they cause no harm to other people. But when we are not neutral in this kind of a situation and we get negative feelings about a person that simply means we have some internal issues that are not being solved. We can learn a lot about ourselves by observing who we hate or dislike.

    Thoroughly asking ourselves why we hate or dislike someone can tell us a lot about ourselves. Are we envious (of what and what our desires are), did somebody in the past treat us the same way etc.

    5 Whys

    5 Whys is a simple technique also used in business to identify the cause and not only deal with the effects. If you want to get rid of the consequences for good, you have to get to the root of the matter. You can identify the real cause by asking yourself “why” several times in a row. It’s a way of identifying your deeper volitions and why you behave in a certain way.

    Let me give you an example. I like geeky superhero movies. Why? Because the good always wins despite the inoperative formal protective and legal system. Why? Because there is “someone” more competent to protect the victim from the bad. Why? Because no one deserves to be a victim and bullied by others. Why? Because I know how awful it feels. Why? Because I experienced domestic violence as a child.

    Getting to know yourself

    Self-reflection

    There is also a big systematic step further you can do to analyze yourself. Psychoanalysis, the psychological technique popularized by Sigmund Freud, is based on you reflecting on your behavior, talking about yourself and coming to small epiphanies and insights into why you are behaving in a certain way and what drives you. It’s especially based on free associations, fantasies and dreams. And you don’t need a therapist for that.

    Explained in a very simplified way, self-reflection means that once per week, you take an hour or more to reflect on your goals, behavioral patterns, negative and positive emotions and everything else that is happening in your life. It’s even better to do this daily, by writing a journal, but you need a lot of time for that, of course. Nevertheless, you can have great breakthroughs by knowing yourself.

    Reflecting is also an integral part of agile software development (SCRUM), where the team reflects on how they work and where they can improve regularly on a weekly basis. I do self-reflection at least two times per week and I come to a small insight about myself every time.

    Having a persona coach is also a viable option to help you with self-reflection. You are always very biased when judging yourself and others. It’s a no-brainer that you judge others much more strictly and that you are indulgent towards yourself. An honest and tough, but fair, coach could greatly contribute towards more realistic reflection.

    Search mode

    A much more fun way to get to know yourself is testing and trying different things in life. Based on the AgileLeanLife principles, I call that the search mode. You may assume what you like and dislike in life but you don’t really know until you try it. Besides developing yourself (personal evolution) and providing value to the world (creating), another important purpose of your life is to be happy and experience as much as possible.

    Why not try as many things as imaginable. You can then do the ones you like over and over again, and simply discard the ones you don’t. But at least you know you’ve tried. You should always be in the search mode in your life – testing, trying and experimenting new things. New travel destinations, new meals, new people, new sex poses, you name it.

    Routine is a much more popular approach to life, but only because it’s easy and safe. Nevertheless, routine is a partly wasted life. There are so many things to do in life, so many things to try. Never settle for a routine just because it’s easy. Your life starts at the end of your comfort zone.

    Personality tests

    Another approach for getting to know yourself are personality tests. There are many different personality tests you can take. You can find many of them on the internet, some of them you can even take for free, but they are not usually the best.

    Investing into knowing yourself is one of the best investments you can make, so spending some money on that kind of a test should not sound like a waste of money to you. Maybe you can also contact one of the HR agencies or personal coaches to help you choose the right tests and give you additional directions. Well, even if you didn’t like tests in school, these tests should be fun.

    Here is an example of really good personality test.

    Primary and secondary socialization

    A good way to see some parts of yourself is to analyze your parents and their personalities and behavior, your family history, schooling process, your nation’s history and current state, culture and so on. The less you know yourself, the less you are determined to live your own life, the more you are only a product of the environment.

    Nevertheless, whether you want it or not, most parts of your personality are not chosen by you but are rather inherited and imparted. Understanding your roots, history and especially your parents can help you a lot in understanding yourself and becoming closer to your real self, in knowing which parts to keep and which parts to discard.

    Analyzing these factors can really help you understand who you really are, what are your inherited positive and negative behavioral patterns, what kind of stuff was imposed on you, how you are similar or different from your parents, what they did right and wrong when raising you and so on.

    Your environment

    Your outer world is merely a reflection of your inner world. At some point, when becoming an adult, you choose almost all elements of your environment. Besides analyzing people, analyzing your environment can reveal a lot about your personality and who you are.

    Is your desk tidy or not, where do you live, which applications are you using on your computer and mobile phone, do you have animals or plants at home, the culture of the company you work for, the places you choose to travel to or visit etc. Everything reveals small parts of your character and who you are. Analyze it carefully. You can help yourself with all the elements of life strategy.

    Ask other people

    The next technique for getting to know yourself better is simply asking other people. There is one simple trick to doing that. We all love praise and hate criticism. Thus we have to prepare ourselves for good and bad feedback, as long as it’s constructive and fair. The good thing is that we can usually learn much more from the negative than the positive feedback. Ask people to give you feedback.

    In business and human resources, there is a very well-known evaluation method called the 360-degree feedback. The main point of this analysis and reflection is to include direct feedback from all the different stakeholders – an employee’s subordinates, peers and supervisor(s), but a self-evaluation is also included. In some cases, it also includes feedback from external sources, such as customers and suppliers or other interested stakeholders. The more feedback, the more angles, the more ways to improve.

    Thus you can ask your friends, coworkers, spouse, parents, kids etc. for feedback about yourself.

    Alternative methods

    There are also some alternative methods you can use, like astrology (a natal chart) or other spiritual techniques (numerology and hundreds of others). I don’t see any arguments against that kind of tools and techniques if they work for you. And if you think they are useless, ignore it.

    That is the basis of the AgileLeanLife and I don’t want to go against it in any kind of situation. Choose the tools and things that work for you personally as an idividual. Having an open mind is essential in life. As the famous quote goes: your mind is like a parachute, it only works when it’s open.

    Listen to your inner voice

    If you really want to be happy and successful you always have to be in touch with your true self and your inner voice.

    The first problem is that you already somehow lose touch with yourself through primary and secondary socialization. The less your desires are listened to, the less you get heard and valued and loved at a young age, from your parents, teachers and other people, the more you start suppressing your desires and living to expectations of others and the society.

    The second problem is that there is too much noise out there because of all the interactive devices, advertising billboards, chores, tasks and other activities. Rather than listening to ourselves and our true desires, we tend to behave according to the society’s expectations.

    Don’t do that to yourself, your life is just too precious. Get to know yourself, always do regular reflections and stay connected to your inner voice and true self. It will do miracles for the quality of your life.

    You can help yourself perform self-analysis with the template below. Download it for free.

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    At the end, here are some additional ideas for what you should clearly know about yourself:

    • What you want to experience in life and making the list of it as a life vision
    • How you learn best – look at the different types of learning and think about which method usually helps you learn a specific topic the fastest
    • Environment in which you function the best – is it stressful, calm, organized, creative etc. How big of an organization suits you best etc.
    • What are your main talents, values, beliefs, hobbies etc.
    • How you can contribute to the world and make it a better place.
    • In which environments, organizations and with whom do you really blossom and can really be yourself.
    • Who you were, who you are and who you want to become (your ideal self).
    • What are the things that you would regret in life
    Homework

    Your homework

    Here is the homework you should do to really get to know yourself better:

    1. Analyze the people who surround you. What kind of people do you like and what kind of acitivites you do together.
    2. Make your personal enjoyment list, the list of activities you like, your hobbies etc.
    3. Carefully analyze how you’re spending your time, money, energy and other resources.
    4. Perform a personal SWOT analysis.
    5. Analyze what kind of people do you dislike and why.
    6. Learn to analyze your dreams and fantasies.
    7. Consider having a mentor or a coach.
    8. Try as many things as possible to figure out what you really like and what you don’t.
    9. Do the 16personalities or any other personality test.
    10. Analyze your parents and their personalities and behavior, your family and nation’s history and culture etc.
    11. Analyze environment you currently operate in.
    12. Go through the life strategy template to become aware of your different beliefs and behavior patterns (here it is).
    13. Ask your friends, coworkers, spouse, parents, kids etc. for feedback about yourself.
    14. Do your ideal-self persona.
    15. Think of all the things you would regret in life if not trying them. Ask yourself why.