Start with thenow
“Dysfunctional Belief: I should already know where I’m going. Reframe: You can’t know where you are going until you know where you are.” – Bill Burnett
Paint a picture of your current situation based on the things you know are happening in your career.
· What are you working on?
· What does your day to day look like?
· Do you feel a sense of passion or achievement in your day to day job?
It’s important to do some research and an audit of your career before making significant decisions – whether that’s a professional change, or a personal one. Once you feel comfortable with your current position, you may feel more ready to look to the future and begin your Plan.
The Odyssey Plan
An Odyssey is as a ‘long and eventful or adventurous journey or experience’. Sometimes, the decision to make a change can be just that. Bill Burnett, Stanford Professor and author ofDesigning Your Work Life,created the Odyssey Plan to help people envision what they want their future to look like.
It’s not so much a rigid plan of action: moreover, it is a process of ideation that brings in all the underpinning values and belief systems from your work/life views, so it becomes a cohesive and multi-dimensional vision, rather than just a career trajectory.
No Odyssey plan completely survives first contact with reality, but being prepared allows us to focus and remain flexible, engaged, and able to make thoughtful decisions on whatever life throws at us.
Building your plan
“Planning is everything, but the plan is nothing” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
To build an Odyssey plan with smart goals, you create 3 alternative realities on 3 sheets of paper. For example, you may want to look at your financial goals. Each reality projects a 5-year trajectory of both your personal lifeandprofessional career path – at least 1 for each year.
To create your plan, and ensure you stay focused, build each timeline as follows:
· Plan #1 – What would the next 5 years look like if you decide to stay on your current career path?
· Plan #2 – What would the next 5 years look like if Plan #1 disappeared?
· Plan #3 – What would the next 5 years look like if money and image were no object?
For each plan, include the following:
· A 6-word title that captures the essence of the plan
· 3 questions to ask yourself – what would you like to learn from the 5 years?
· A dashboard that indicates how you rank the plan against 4 criteria:
o Resources: Do you have what you need to execute the plan?
o I like it: Do you like the plan?
o Confidence: Are you confident about the success of executing the plan?
o Coherence: Is the plan consistent with who you are?
Taking your plan forward
Once you have created 3 separate timelines, you can extend one of these into a 10-year plan to target a long term goal. The 10-year plan can include elements from all 3 timelines but should still contain a dominant framework.
“As a life designer, you need to embrace two philosophies: 1. You choose better when you have lots of good ideas to choose from. 2. You never choose your first solution to any problem.” – Bill Burnett
Reflecting on 3 different plans with 3 different scenarios and outcomes will help you to find clarity in what are looking to achieve. For example, whilst Plan #3 may seem unrealistic at face-value, the elements that feature may remind you of what is really important when setting goals.
The 10-year plan follows the same structure as when you were 5-year Odyssey planning in that it should encompass both professionalandpersonal life milestones. It should also include 3 questions, and a dashboard to indicate your ranking of your Odyssey plans.
It should also include a thank you note. Imagine yourself at the end of your 10-year plan and write a letter to the person who designed it. Write about your five year plan as if it has already been completed, thanking the designer who created the plan for specific things that happened in those 10 years:
· What will you be most thankful for?
· How will you feel knowing that you’ve achieved what you set out to do 10 years prior?
This reflection is a valuable exercise because when you look backwards from the future, you can draw out the things that are most important to you over the next five years and then the next ten. Odyssey planning isn't about short term goals or planning what's going to happen next week, it's about setting out the right direction for you to achieve long term goals.
So, where do you see yourself in 5 years?
So, perhaps the dreaded question isn’t so dreaded after all. Now you have the tool to break down your long term goals into manageable steps, you will be well-equipped to build a plan that feels far less daunting, and far more achievable.
Wherever you want to be, and however you wish to get there, Odyssey planning will not only help you to visualise your future, but also provide you with the framework with which to take the first step.
Good luck!
Interested in making your own Odyssey Plan? Download your free template here
