What in the hell do I want to do with my life? (Part 1) - The Odyssey Plan.
Welcome to 'The Brief Case'. a Newsletter where I "briefly" distill and discuss my life's random insights, realisations and epiphanies.
Wassup! gang,
Yeah, I have been extremely inconsistent, but I came very close to quitting and not doing it at all rather than at least showing up sometimes. That’s the thing, often times we stop doing a thing completely just because it doesn’t go the way it’s ought to or we want them to. But hey, inconsistent writing is better than no writing at all, none of you guys read these crappy stuff that I put out anyway. Alright so, recently I’ve been trying to figure our very hard what I’m gonna do with my life. It’s like I wanna do something that feels meaningful and fulfilling and brings me happiness and helps people, and try to find my passion, but at the same time I’m thinking I don’t really know what my passion is or if this is the thing I wanna do for the next 20 years.
So, to try and untangle all these stuff, I will be using this newsletter as my journal, apart from my usual journal and publish them, perhaps, this will be beneficial to anyone else going through similar circumstances. So, today I want to talk about a framework called The Odyssey Plan. Now this is from a book called Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans at Stanford Business School, but I first came across this about a week ago when two YouTubers - UnJaded Jade and Ali Abdaal put up a video about it on their Youtube channels. But what actually is the Odyssey Plan? I’m glad you asked, but it’s better you hear it from the man himself and then I’ll try to boil it down.
Since we all love a list of 3, with The Odyssey Plan there are 3 things we want to be thinking about.
The first thing we wanna ask ourselves is - What would my life look like 5 years down the line if I continue down exactly the same path that I am currently on right now? And we want to write it out in as much detail as we can, what a day in our life would look like 5 years from now if we carry on with exactly the same thing we are doing.
Secondly we wanna ask the same question but - What would my life look like 5 years from now if my current path is completely shut down and I have to choose a completely different approach or different path (assuming everything works out objectively how it’s ought to)? We want to write in extreme detail what are and would be our fears, pleasures and motivations then, and what a day in our life would look like then.
And lastly we want to think about - What would my life look like 5 years from now if money and societal expectations are not a differentiator anymore, and these things didn’t matter at all.
How an Odyssey Plan might help?
This exercise is really insightful when approaching the big “what shall I do next?” question. Fundamentally, it will make us consider the longevity of our career/life plans and decisions, and play the long game with this career malarkey, thinking about our mission/goals (or whatever you may call it) and lifestyle, and think about possibilities rather than current actualities. It will also forced us to consider alternative realities and let go of things having to be a certain way in order to achieve happiness or success (whatever that means to you).
I'll try to journal the Odyssey Plan for myself every weekend and discuss how it helps right away. Then, at the end of the year, I'll go back to it and share with you guys how thinking about the Odyssey Plan helped me make decisions and try new approaches to accomplishing a goal.
This was one of the three frameworks I am attempting to use to determine what the hell I truly want to do with my life. I'll share the other ones in the forthcoming newsletters, so you might want to subscribe (it's free) to be notified when they go live.
Thanks a lot for reading. Subscribe as a paid member and I will deliver flowers to your doorstep every month or, if we happen to be in the same city, I take you out on a lunch. I am kidding. Or am I? Have a great day, bu-byeee.
Warm Regards
Arnab Dey
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