My book, Single Page Life Plan explains how you can extend single page planning to all of your important projects and ventures. Single Page Checklists are a ‘catch-all’ for special projects that you can review regularly to stay focused.
Copyright 2013 Ballylongford Books, LLC
For example, the Single Page Checklist for Buying Apartments summarizes on a single page the 4-color, 6 page laminated flyer I created that explains:
It has been said, in a lot of clever ways, that people who do not care where they are going, don’t need a map. But CEO’s need a business plan, coaches need a game plan, pilots need a flight plan, and leaders need a life plan. Here are 5 things to include in yours …
Single Page Life Plan™ 2013 Ballylongford Books, LLC1. Mission or Vision Statement:
This is the overarching vision you have for your life. All other parts of your plan synchronize with this.
2. Life Categories:
Your Life Categories are the six major highways that lead a path towards your Vision Statement. These Life Categories are the most vital aspects of your life.
Einstein often commented that unlocking the greatest mysteries of the universe would be useless unless you could make them be understandable to a young student.
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It takes a lot of effort and creativity to reduce things to their most simple form.
The genius of Albert Einstein was not that he could comprehend so many of the complexities of space, time, gravity, and light. All scientists can do that. His genius was in his ability to simplify those complexities into an understandable theory of relativity.
The brilliance of a Single Page Life Plan© lies in its simplicity. It must never be P.O.S.H. – Perfect, Overloaded, Set in stone, or Hidden.
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Your life plan is not the Magna Carta! It is an important document—but it’s different. Your life plan is a blueprint of how you want to live your life. It forces you to identify your goals and strategies, and it makes it easier for you to gauge results and to stay accountable. However, it is not meant to be all-inclusive or perfect.
Mark Twain once said, “Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.” So, don’t get mired down searching for a grand epiphany here. Just get things going in the right direction.
If you knew 10 years from now that you’d be hit by a meteorite , how would you spend those 10 years? Building an anti-meteor device, of course!
Hoba Meteorite (this 60 ton meteorite, in the Otjozondjupa Region of Namibia, is the largest meteorite in a single piece, known on the earth’s surface) Courtesy iStockphoto.com
Pretending that we might not live forever can be a motivation for creating a Single Page Life Plan©; for adding some intentionality to our lives. A good question to ask ourselves is this: A decade from now, how would I want somebody to describe that period of my life? What must I focus on for this to happen?
You make all of the choices when creating your life plan. It is unique to you. Your Vision Statement is the overarching purpose you see for your life. There is no right or wrong answer as long as it resonates with where you want to go. But, to create a laser-like focus, keep your Vision Statement short! 40 words or less.
For some brainstorming help, here are some examples …
It has been said by many people, in a variety of ways that people who don’t care where they are going, don’t need a road map. The rest of us, however, recognize the value of adding direction to our lives. Of setting a course that aims us towards our dreams and aspirations.You are unique! Plan accordingly!
A Single Page Life Page is fast, simple, and life-changing. It is personal to you. Choose:
Peripheries are not priorities. Peripheries in your life have to earn their way to page one. Until then, they are just distractions; they are clutter.
In my book, Single Page Life Plan, I explains how you can make a big change in your life, just by adding a few Coins to your day.
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Coins are those small things we can do every day to help make another person’s life better. Every day we wake up in the morning with a certain number of Coins in our hand that we can potentially spend.
To spend them wisely, we have to be:
Because here’s the thing … the Coins you don’t spend by the end of the day, are gone forever.
If you could add an hour to every week of your life, how would you spend those extra 52 hours that you pick up each year? Exercising? Reading? Enjoying some quiet time?
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You can add that hour to your week if you choose Stop Hitting the Snooze Button as one of the Action Steps of your Single Page Life Plan©, because most snooze alarms are set for nine minutes. Those 9 minutes, multiplied by 7 days, adds up to over an hour per week! This illustrates the power of a single Action Step.
A time-management consultant once told me the story of a doctor who complained to her that he always seemed to be 15 minutes behind schedule all day long. She visited his office to try to solve his problem. What she discovered was remarkably simple … he regularly began his first appointment of the day, with his very first patient, 15 minutes late! Simple Action Steps can make an enormous impact on your life.
I’ll leave it to you to determine how important this action step was, but I really believed it change my life for the better. I decided to
A friend of mine once said, “Chaos is my friend!” While he was kidding, I could sense that there was a part of him that relished multitasking a hundred things at the same time. It was almost like a game for him; a game he thought he played well.
Photo courtesy of istockphoto.comOne of the main reasons people avoid creating a life plan is because they have become comfortable with chaos. This manifests itself in 5 different ways.
