Creating Your Life Strategy: 12 Crucial Steps for Success
Do you want to create a life strategy as a viable working tool for your growth? Then it is imperative to employ appropriate strategic methods and tools rather than planning spontaneously.
Creating a life strategy encompasses diverse knowledge, incorporating approaches and tools to facilitate strategic analysis and formulate well-grounded plans. But how does one choose the best set without being a strategist? Remarkably, methods and tools that prove effective in developing corporate strategies are more likely to be relevant to personal strategizing, albeit with minor adjustments.
This article is the basis of one of the key lessons in our Advanced Personal Strategic Planning course. It will help you realize how the following lessons will help you build your life strategy, step by step, with thoughtfully curated sessions. Strategy sessions usually shape our corporate strategy program. However, personal strategizing is an independent effort, so the organizational part of these sessions becomes unnecessary.
Table of Contents
Express Life Balance Wheel + sIQ Assessment
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Unlock your potential with 5 essential metrics:
- Strategium Personal Score – track 20 key areas of life.
- External Trend Impact – assess your environment.
- Personal Enhancement Mode – level of effort required.
- Strategic Planning Horizon – advised planning period.
- Strategium Intelligence Quotient – your new benchmark.
Unleash Your Potential: Master the Strategium Space Method for Crafting Your Life Strategy
Strategium Space Method presents a groundbreaking approach to creating a life strategy. In our previous modules, we uncovered the fundamental elements of long-term plans. Now, let us delve into the specific steps that form the backbone of this transformative methodology.
While an in-depth exploration of each step awaits you in dedicated lessons, we provide a concise overview to visualize the strategic planning process and map out the work ahead.
The primary objective of this lesson is to grasp the underlying logic behind the sequential steps and their distinct purposes in developing a robust personal strategy. As you may have discerned, the disparities between business and life strategic planning approaches reside primarily in the nuances. The core principles remain the same, allowing you to easily switch from developing a life strategy to formulating a strategic plan for your organization. This comprehensive course provides you with this remarkable advantage.
To deepen your understanding, read reviews of each step outlined below. Don’t fall for simple and worthless approaches. Immerse yourself in this transformative and profound journey to create an achievable life plan aligned with your aspirations.
Step 1. Unlocking the Macro Environment in Your Life Strategy through PESTLE Analysis
Your journey towards a strategic life starts by delving into the first crucial step: PESTLE analysis. This method empowers you to evaluate the macro-level environment and decipher how various aspects within that environment will shape your future. Using the PESTLE analysis method carefully, you will dissect and analyze the essential factors of politics, economics, society, technology, law, ecology, and more.
By identifying emerging trends within these factors, you gain invaluable insights into their potential impact on both your future and the future of your environment, even in the long term. Recognizing the interconnectedness of these layers is essential, as each facet exerts a distinct influence on the path ahead.
An upcoming lesson on this topic will detail the many factors to consider in your PESTLE analysis. Uncover the intricate nuances of each element and harness their collective power to construct a life strategy tailored to your aspirations and the realities of the ever-evolving world around you.
Step 2. Harnessing the Power of SWOT Analysis for Your Life Strategy
SWOT analysis, a renowned strategic analysis method, holds immense value in our approach to crafting a strategy. It enables us to discern internal strengths and weaknesses and identify opportunities and threats from the external environment.
The previous step will shed light on how the external environment affects our current and future state. This information will frame the opportunities and threats. And if you additionally identify your weaknesses and strengths, you’ll gain insight into the obstacles to your progress and the untapped potential that remains to be activated. To explore this topic further, refer to the dedicated lesson.
Step 3. Discovering Preliminary Concepts: Life Protostrategies
In this step, we touch on what can be the basis of our strategy. Protostrategies are your preliminary strategic ideas based on advanced SWOT analysis. This approach serves as a valuable tool in crafting our life strategy.
These two steps, SWOT and Protostrategies, form an advanced SWOT analysis. Given the extensive nature of this work and the unique perspectives required, it made sense to divide them into separate stages.
While the SWOT analysis focuses on analytical aspects, protostrategies take a step further by identifying specific solutions to address particular problems or combinations of issues identified in the SWOT. This research demands a slightly different mindset as we outline the essential directions for our future strategy with broad strokes.
Step 4. Personal Business Model: Discovering Income and Expense Aspects
In this stage, we delve into a topic that may challenge our conventional thinking. People traditionally associate the concept of a business model with organizations, but let’s set aside that notion for now.
The underlying truth is that every person needs a means to support themselves, whether earning income or acquiring essential resources for survival from other sources. Even in the extraordinary case of Robinson Crusoe, thrown on a beautiful island, he had to pay for his journey, which required funds from someone else.
Whether we engage in business ventures, work for others, or rely on grants or pensions, we all interact with individuals, organizations, or the state to fulfill our needs. Therefore, let’s consider all aspects of income generation as part of our broader understanding of the “business model” concept.
It’s worth noting that this step will be particularly beneficial for those seeking to launch or enhance their business ventures, as it directly addresses their objectives.
Secrets of Income Generation: Exploring Common Patterns
Many individuals rely on a single income generation method throughout their lives. For instance, they may receive pocket money from their parents during childhood, obtain a student scholarship during their academic years, earn a salary during their professional career, and eventually rely on a pension during retirement. In essence, these represent distinct business models, each serving as a source of income.
However, the rapidly evolving modern economy and technological advancements threat these widespread income models. Economic downturns and job redundancies can disrupt wage-based earnings, while changes in retirement policies, such as raised retirement ages, can disrupt the expected income flow for countless retirees.
It is understandable that such transformations negatively impact individuals’ financial well-being. Just as companies adapt and evolve their business models in response to market changes, it is becoming increasingly crucial for everyone to consider the same.
Regularly analyzing and evaluating one’s revenue models and exploring new avenues of income is essential in this ever-changing economic landscape. While it may not be necessary to do so continuously, periodic reflection and adaptation to shifting circumstances can ensure sustained financial stability.
Unleashing the Power of Advanced Business Modelling Techniques
The rapidly evolving landscape of technology and changing consumer preferences constantly reshape the business landscape. Business modeling is becoming an invaluable tool for analyzing and adapting to changes in this dynamic environment. But can we apply this approach to our own lives?
The decision to develop a personal business model rests with you. While I strongly recommend creating one, its necessity depends on the specific goals of your life strategy. After all, why devise a strategic plan if we neglect the financial aspect of our lives?
Consider what you desire to transform in your life. Is it your career, profession, lifestyle, or even your health? Can you confidently make these changes without a comprehensive analysis of their impact on your expense/income model? I am doubtful. That’s precisely why I am embarking on creating my business model.
It is crucial to examine your current and the envisioned future business models. Visualizing the effectiveness of your existing model becomes an essential step in this process. We will employ our innovative Closed-Loop Value Cycle Business Model approach.
More detailed guidance awaits you in the lesson, where we delve into the intricacies of business model analysis.
Step 5. Unveiling Your Mission: the Essence of Life Strategy
As we navigate through the intricate web of the outer world we’ve examined, it becomes crucial to understand our place within it. It’s time to unravel our mission. Why does this step matter so much?
Our mission represents the essence of our existence—not the goal, but the beacon that illuminates our purpose and gives it clarity. Humans do not live isolated; we exist within families, organizations, and a vast network of social systems and relationships. These connections open opportunities to live, work, interact, create, and transform. And, of course, we derive income and benefits from our business model.
Hence, our mission forges a vital link with the external environment, defining our role in the world.
However, when it comes to planning, we can’t declare our mission before analyzing the viability of our existence and its alignment with the modern world and our environment. We must assess the relevance of our business model. Only then can we affirm that our mission harmonizes with our path of existence and development.
Since the mission should not be a mere wishful aspiration but a well-considered and justified commitment, we address it after examining our revenue model. By doing so, we ground ourselves, avoiding aimless wanderings in the clouds in search of our purpose.
First, we analyze where and how we will sustain ourselves and then define our role. Although mission and vision often go hand in hand, our next sprint is not about developing a vision statement. There’s another essential milestone awaiting us.
Step 6. Unlocking the Power of 20 Life Areas for Life Strategy
After formulating a mission, it is essential to translate it into actionable steps and integrate them into our daily lives to bring our mission to fruition.
The organizational design concept refers to these deliberate and regular actions as functions. Functions are crucial in directly or indirectly contributing to our mission’s fulfillment.
Understanding the Link between Mission and Daily Actions
To transform our mission from mere words into reality, we must establish everyday actions and habits aligned with our mission.
The mission and supporting functions shape our daily activities and way of life, helping us progress. Many of us are far from reaching our goals, and some have yet to define our mission. As we articulated our mission in the previous step, adjusting ourselves and our lifestyle becomes imperative.
Changing our lifestyle is no easy task, but it is through this process that significant life changes occur, necessitating a well-planned personal strategy.
What we usually do in life is our de facto mission. And if it differs from the intended one, that’s a problem. You would be hardly satisfied to define your mission as sleep, work, TV, video games, and social media. Enjoy the actual mission of the average person in the chart below.
We can consciously allocate our time and shape our activities rather than being driven solely by biology, environment, and economics. To effectively manage these processes, we need to analyze the structure of our daily activities and tasks. Just as companies establish structured business functions and assign responsibilities, we can do the same with our way of life.
Structuring Your Lifestyle for Effective Goal Setting
Let’s make this process more systematic and link it to our mission. Structuring our lifestyles enables us to manage our actions and tasks more effectively.
To simplify this work, we will introduce three levels of structuring:
- Personality Projections: These fundamental and interconnected aspects of our personality are necessary for mission realization. They represent different perspectives of the same whole. Examples include health, self-development, career, and position in society.
- Life Areas: These second-level classifications break down the enlarged aspects of our life into smaller parts. Each life area contributes to the projections.
- Tasks: At the bottom level, specific tasks align our life areas with our mission. They form the foundation of the goal-oriented actions we plan on the next steps.
This structured approach helps us manage our lifestyle and facilitates goal setting intelligently. By analyzing and organizing our activities in this structured way, we gain valuable insights and the ability to navigate future stages effectively.
Step 7. Crafting a Dynamic Vision for Life Strategy
And now, it is time to delve into the concept of vision. After determining our actions and regular activities to align with the mission, we should look beyond that and define our desired future.
Let’s imagine I’m working on the groundbreaking economic management system project Noosphereum. Instead of letting it fade away in obscurity, I envision myself leading the implementation of this system in the next decade. Furthermore, I aspire to spearhead the company operating this system eventually. Of course, I will refine the specifics in due time, but the essence of this vision is taking shape.
By now, you should grasp the significance of vision and how it propels us towards goal-setting and achieving specific objectives. The idea of envisioning our future in five or twenty-five years serves as a guiding model that our life strategy aims to embody.
Step 8. Unveiling the Power of Strategy Mapping for Life Success
Now let’s delve into the intricacies of our vision and map out the path to its realization. It’s time to break down the idea into actionable stages and identify the intermediate steps to propel us forward. This stage is where goals come into play.
A goal represents a clear and measurable description of our desired future state and provides a guiding beacon. The goal map we create showcases the interconnectedness of our personal goals and the cause-and-effect relationships between them.
However, we cannot have arbitrary goals; instead, they must have a grounding in reality. We must derive each objective from specific cause-effect relationships that we uncover. By establishing these interconnected goals, we will shape a strategic blueprint for our future.
Thus, a strategic map—is a powerful tool that helps us visualize, balance, and logically justify our interconnected strategy. It empowers us to chart a course toward our vision.
Step 9. Unleashing the Power of Strategic Projects: Your Path to Goal Achievement
In this crucial step, we delve deep into the world of strategic projects, uncovering the direct pathways that will lead us to accomplish our goals. Whether they take the form of strategic initiatives, programs, or projects, these powerful techniques are the driving force behind realizing our vision and mission.
During the upcoming step, we will explore the intricacies of strategic projects, leaving no stone unturned. At this stage, it’s essential to acknowledge that while we may conceive numerous projects during the planning phase, successful implementation requires careful consideration of resource planning and balance. By addressing these key factors, we can ensure that our projects become achievable milestones on our journey to success.
Step 10. Unleash the Hidden Power of Resources: Fueling Your Strategic Success
While many have mastered the art of financial planning, it’s unfortunate that other critical resources often go overlooked. In this stage, we will delve into the art of resource planning, equipping you with the skills to harness the full potential of these vital assets.
Recall our exploration of different bits of intelligence. In the new economy, these resources hold immense value for your life strategy. We will allocate our time effectively, comprehending how it transforms multiple intelligence into tangible results while assessing the requirement for supplementary resources.
It’s worth noting that strategies often falter not due to a lack of material resources but rather to more subtle factors equally crucial for achieving success. These include knowledge, competencies, relationships, and countless other elements. While money may be readily available in today’s credit-driven economy, the challenge lies in effectively managing it.
It is essential to anticipate how the absence of specific resources may impact the execution of your strategy. Therefore, we must proactively create and cultivate these resources to propel us toward our strategic goals.
Once we complete resource balancing, our life strategy begins to take shape. The final step involves formalizing it, a process we will guide you through in a separate lesson, providing as much support as possible for this arduous task.
However, there is another pivotal step that can significantly influence the content of your strategy. It involves garnering support from all stakeholders or considering necessary changes in your lineup. This critical element will ensure your plan is backed by the right individuals or adapted accordingly for maximum impact.
Step 11. Achieving Strategic Harmony: The Power of Synchronisation
Synchronization is the crucial process of aligning strategic elements. It ensures the systematic integration and harmonization of various strategies within and across higher-level frameworks by comparing strategic plans and ensuring their alignment.
Let’s envision an ideal world where limitless opportunities abound. In this realm of perfection, I can create anything, including a groundbreaking economic management system that resonates with like-minded individuals and attracts valuable partners.
However, our reality is far from ideal, so even the most brilliant ideas can falter. Therefore, it is crucial to broadcast our projects in advance to engage interested parties. This proactive approach safeguards against investing excessive time and effort into ideas that lack support.
Ideally, you should engage stakeholders and influencers throughout each strategizing phase. After the release of your plan, it may be too late necessitating potential redesigns.
We have ingrained this approach in our program. For instance, reach out to your stakeholders after the strategic analysis stage. Similarly, consult them again when crafting your strategic objectives map. Implementing Scrum principles in this manner ensures the inclusion of perspectives from those who will support or impede your progress.
People deserve to know about your plans, particularly if you intend to harness their resources and affect their interests. By taking this approach, we can reduce resistance and gain access to valuable feedback.
Once the strategy has taken shape, you can further align your strategic plan with potential counterparts and establish enduring partnerships through long-term agreements.
Should any comments or discrepancies arise regarding the plans, the concerned individuals or organizations can express their desires for adjustments, enabling your life strategy to adapt to new circumstances and achieve alignment.
Step 12. Tracking and Executing Your Life Strategy
This stage helps to monitor and execute your life strategy effectively. The key to achieving your goals is to stay on track and adjust to change. Our approach employs two essential concepts to make this process systemic: the Strategic Feedback Loop and the Adaptive Management Cycle.
The Strategic Feedback Loop is a systematic process that enables you to evaluate your strategy’s progress and make necessary adjustments. By regularly collecting and analyzing feedback from various sources, such as stakeholders and performance indicators, you can identify areas of improvement and refine your approach. We will discuss practical techniques for implementing the Strategic Feedback Loop to ensure your strategy remains relevant.
Additionally, we will introduce the concept of the Adaptive Management Cycle. Life is full of unexpected twists and turns, and flexibility is crucial when implementing a strategy. The Adaptive Management Cycle provides a framework for adapting and updating your strategic plan based on new information and changing circumstances. We will guide you through the steps of this cycle, empowering you to respond to challenges and seize emerging opportunities proactively.
By mastering the implementation, monitoring, and updating of your life strategy, you will gain the tools and knowledge to navigate the ever-evolving landscape of your goals. Join us on this transformative journey as we uncover the secrets to effectively executing your strategy and achieving long-term success.
Creating Your Personal Strategic Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide to Fulfill Your Mission Statement
Assignment: Tailoring the Strategium Space Methodology
The objective is to customize the Strategium Space Scrum methodology to develop your life strategy. You will analyze the method and determine the appropriate mix of steps for your strategy project.
Instructions:
- Study the composition and structure of the Strategium method and understand the purpose and objectives of each step.
- Evaluate how the steps in the Strategium method align with your specific objectives and where they can contribute to your strategy development.
- Determine which steps directly address your strategic needs and select the most valuable in creating your customized life strategy.
- Review the Strategium method to determine if it covers all aspects of your situation. If you identify any gaps or missing steps in the methodology, provide a comment in this lesson explaining what additional steps you believe are needed.
- If you find that the Strategium methodology lacks specific steps you require, seek guidance from the instructor in the comments. Explain the areas where you believe other approaches could be beneficial.
- Decide whether to include all the steps from the Strategium methodology or customize the sprint sequence to fit your objectives better. Justify your decision, considering the potential implications of omitting or modifying some steps.
Remember that this assignment aims to help you tailor the methodology to your unique goals and objectives. Your customization should consider the specific requirements of your life strategy project.
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1 Comment
I have developed this methodology based on various scientific methods and proven tools. In my opinion, this combination of strategic steps provides a comprehensive analysis of life situations at any age and helps create a complete development strategy.
However, in some cases, additional steps may be required to address specialized needs in medical, psychological, and other aspects of life. Your task is to identify any missing elements in the method relevant to you personally and plan this work for yourself, either later or even before completing the entire course.