The One-Page Life Plan
At some point every serious person writes a life plan. Vision statements, ten-year goals, mission, values, the full binder. Mine ran to about thirty pages, took a long weekend, and I don’t believe I opened it twice. It was impressive and useless, because a plan you don’t look at isn’t a plan. It’s a souvenir of a weekend.
What replaced it is one page. Handwritten. Folded in my wallet, and rewritten once a year. It’s steered more decisions than everything else I’ve ever written combined.
What’s on it
At the top, one sentence: what I’m building my life toward. Not a mission statement; a plain description of the life, the way I’d explain it to a friend. Mine mentions the people, the work, and the freedom to choose my days. Yours will be different. The test is whether reading it makes you sit up slightly.
Under that, five areas: health, family and people, work and money, mind, and the thing I do just because I love it. For each, two lines. Where it is now, honestly. Where I want it in three years, specifically. Ten lines total.
Then the three things for this year. One line each. Things that, if done, move the five areas toward the three-year lines. Not twenty. Three.
At the bottom, two lists: things I’ll say no to this year, and things that are not for sale at any price. These two lists have saved me more than the goals have.
Why one page
Because you’ll read it. I look at mine every few weeks, usually when a decision has me stuck. Thirty pages can’t do that. One page in a wallet can be read in a parking lot in ninety seconds, and ninety seconds is usually enough to remember what I’m actually doing with my life and decide accordingly.
Decisions get easier
The opportunity that looks good but doesn’t touch any of the five areas: no. The ask that lands on the not-for-sale list: no, without the usual agonising. The thing that advances two areas at once: yes, even if it’s inconvenient. The page doesn’t make decisions for you. It just makes the right ones faster and the wrong ones obvious.
Rewrite, don’t update
Once a year, around my birthday, I write it again from scratch without looking at the old one. Then I compare. What changed tells me where I’ve grown and where I’ve drifted, and what stayed identical tells me what actually matters, because it survived a year of life unchanged.
Keep it to yourself, mostly
This isn’t for sharing. The moment it’s for an audience it becomes performance. One person, maybe, who’s earned it. Otherwise it’s between you and the version of you who has to live it.
This weekend
One sheet. The sentence, the five areas with two lines each, three things for the year, the two lists. Fold it. Put it where you’ll find it in a parking lot.
Launch list
Be there on day one.
One email when the book opens on Kickstarter. Nothing else. Already reading the book? Your Cheat Sheet is at wisdomdeck.com/free.
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The book itself — 40 laws in ten parts, 320 pages, each ending with The Work — is funded first on Kickstarter.