It’s a rare oddity for a person to have a written plan for their lives, though most at least have some vague wishes. You will never achieve your potential without making and executing a plan to do so. Are you less important or less complicated than a building? In both buildings and people, a written plan is essential in order to maximize what can be accomplished. It is impossible to make optimal decisions or work efficiently without the ability to prioritize competing options of action. It’s impossible to prioritize well without considering expected impact. You can’t achieve a large goal without decomposing desired outcomes into the steps required to obtain them. No substantial construction project is ever undertaken without a detailed plan. Why should you expect to have a successful life if you aren’t willing to pay at least as much attention to it as any architect would a construction project?
What is your purpose in life? What kind of person do you want to be? What is important to you, why, and by how much? What goals do you want to achieve? What do you have to do and not do in the short and long-term to achieve them? The answer to these questions is your plan for life.
A life plan shows where you are right now and where you are going. With a life plan, you can constructively map the motivation provided by large, long-term goals into each and every moment, empowering you to do more and feel better in every moment of every day.
A life plan frees your character from the gravity of your past, defining what you need to do today to become what you want to be. Instead of being trapped by your self-image, you actively engineer it, task by task. You can embody any character you choose through building a life plan that describes it. From paper, you can instantiate it into a real person.
If you want help in designing a plan for your life, read the author’s book Joy on Purpose.