How to answer your mid life crisis with data?
Back to makerverse after a short hiatus 🙌
Every life is unique and everyone approaches it differently. I approached my mid-life with a plethora of questions and a bunch of experiments. Been at it for 6 years. I thought I will be able to figure things out in 3 months. Boy! this rabbit hole was deeper and harder than I imagined.
I started with some big questions of life.
- What is life?
- What is the purpose of my life?
- Am I worth it?
- What is health?
- How to get healthy?
- What is wealth?
- How to get wealthy?
- What is a career?
- Can I change my career anytime? What does it mean to change?
- yada yada yada...
I didn't have any ready made answers. Truth to be told there was more confusion than clarity. As a strategist, my day job is to dwell in chaos and find clarity. Life as a domain was no different. So I decided to use the same old design process that I used to solve wicked problems out there to figure out life problems as well.
I was a blank slate in a few areas. I had some hypothesis in a few. I had a clear path forward in others. Depending upon my clarity and confidence I drew up some experiments on life. Evidence was crucial for me as a researcher. I am so glad I did these experiments and answered my mid-life questions with data 🙈
Looking back 6 years has been an amazing journey figuring out life in the most curious and humble way. I didn't have any charted plans. My objective was to just experiment with life and figure out.
My occupation hazard made me do experiments in a structured way, collecting evidences, synthesising data, finding insights and aha-moments and iterating the solution based on what I found. It was fun get immediete feedback and results during the process as I was my customer.
Unlike usual product design or service design assignments, I was the customer and I was the designer too. The art and the artist existed in the same space. I never had an opportunity like this before. It was exciting and fun. I grew up as a better designer post life design.
To keep myself sane, I gave it a structure. I called it as Project Phoenix.
Connecting dots backwards, I finally figured out what is health? what is wealth? what is happiness? what is career? what is freedom and more using sense, science and systems.
I played with health, wealth, careers, learning and more in this period. More than knowing what to do, I clearly understand what not to do.
Looking back, here are 5 tips for you to figure out your life's quest.
- Put down your aspirations, your bucket lists, your dreams and desires for this lifetime in writing. Let's call this point B.
- Look at where you stand right now as a status quo. Let's call it point A.
- Measure the gap between your point A and point B.
- Figure out 4-5 important milestones between point A and B that will help you measure better.
- Start working towards the nearest milestone. One project at a time.
- Bonus tip: Work with someone who has figured it out. Don't do it all by yourself (it is painful and time consuming)
I have committed my time and energy to help my fellow sapiens figure things out with life because this sh*t is hard. I have decided to do it as a long term side hustle.
Side hustle as a concept never made sense to me till I fell in love with Life Design. It was not about profitability or passive income or learning a new skill or audience building. I could not place my Life Design quest into any known bucket. It was different and to a large extent very special. DesignU it is!
My first DesignU program is all about building your health your way (BYHY). The main effect of this program is building health and the side effect could be weight loss, disease reversal, set a lifestyle for life, mental wellness and more.
Details here: cutt.ly/cmDsh2J
I am excited and nervous at the same time.
🥂 to DesignU!