The LIFE Project

Chapter 2: Entering the Matrix

It took me a couple of days to get to this point. I originally planned to start applying the project management approach to my life on Saturday already, but it's Monday now and I didn't touch my to-do list at all over the weekend. 

I understand why, though. It's daunting to me to let go of the status quo. I've been doing the goal-setting thing for ages, setting a myriad goals and then seeing which ones I get done. I've just come to realize that my approach is no longer effective, and it definitely stopped being fun at some stage. 

Still, letting go of all my plans is scary. It's necessary, though, if I want to figure out my life. Part of the issue is job creep. No matter what I do, more and more tasks just keep creeping into my plans until it's nearly impossible to figure out what I need to do. 

This is how I simplified my goals last year and somehow still ended up with hundreds of Trello cards, none of which went from To Do to Complete. 

My system isn't working, so I need to rethink. 

The first thing I'm doing (I'm writing this as I go) is to set my overall goal for the LIFE Project. Why am I doing all the things I want to do. Previously, my goals were about a search for meaning and success. In the face of everything that's happened... both feel a bit empty. So already at that level, I'm having to rethink. After first trying to use my old goals and just impose structure, I decided to start again from scratch. I kept the old Trello board just in case I want to go back to the old system. 

Also, I decided I'm going to run this new approach as a pilot project. In other words, I want to see if it works until the end of the year. If it doesn't, I can adjust or go back. I have a good feeling about this, though. But I digress (I'm VERY good at digressing). 

Truth is, the entire reason why I've decided to embark on this project is because I've fallen into a rut. Or maybe it's more accurate to say I dug myself into it like a World War One soldier. Bombs were landing all around and blood and guts were flying everywhere, so I dug down into my nice little trench for a sense of security. I kept my head down and just kept doing what I could to stay alive and functional. 

At the time, it was a good strategy. I got hurt a lot less. Thing is... there's a stage when the war stops and you need to get out and get on with your life, and I haven't. And I think that's the source of my unhappiness. Even though I am theoretically free to leave the trench, I'm still sitting there, even though I'm not nearly as worried about any more bombs falling. 

It's a lonely, isolating existence, but it's surprisingly easy to fool yourself into thinking you're in the right place. I found both meaning and success in that trench. But I'm still in there, in a tiny world that is increasingly making me feel hemmed in instead of protected. 

So now my focus is shifting. I want to get out, breathe in the fresh air, and feel the sun on my face. All that is my poetic way (hey, I'm not saying it was good) of saying: I want to improve my quality of life. 

No chasing success at the cost of my mental health. No searching for meaning and becoming a hermit. Yes, I did both. The hermit one I didn't quite succeed at, but my cousin and current housemate calls me a cave troll, and she's not wrong. I've become really, really good at avoiding my life... to the point where I hate it. 

So that's the overall aim of the LIFE Project: Improve my quality of life. 

I want to live, not merely function. 

Okay, now that I know what I'm doing, it's time to think about what that means. Oh, don't worry, I'll get into the meaning of life in due course. Today, though, I'm working on breaking down that aim into doable chunks. First, I'm going to brainstorm some themes of things I know make my life better: 

The first six are self-explanatory, I think. Expansion is about indulging in my growth mindset. I love learning new things, trying new things, exploring new places, etc. For all that, though, I feel like I haven't been spending near enough time on doing this. (Hard to grow as a person in a trench.) 

Recreation is on the list because I know myself. Once I build momentum with my goals, I have a tendency to completely lose myself in them to the point where I burn myself out, or to the point where I'm literally posing a health risk to myself. The fact is that no amount of money in the world can compensate for being in good health, so that is a compromise I'm no longer willing to make. Rest and recreation is important, so I want to make sure I make space for it in my life. 

I might add more themes as I learn and grow, but for now, I think I can start my project management process. The first thing I want to do is look at these themes and group them in an Eisenhower matrix. For those of you who don't know, an Eisenhower matrix is a two-by-two table that breaks things up by urgency vs importance. The idea is to focus on the most urgent, most important things first. When those are done, you go to the important, less urgent things. The less important, less urgent things are next on the list, and finally, there are the things that are neither important nor urgent. Those have the lowest priority and get done last, if ever. 

These things also change as time goes on, I think I'll be re-evaluating the matrix every month to three months to see if my priorities need to change. Anyway, I'm putting those themes into the matrix, so it looks like this: 

Based on this, I can prioritize the themes. Next, I'm going to take each of the themes and brainstorm some things I can do under each theme to improve my life. For now, I think this is enough for the day. I'm going to go work on something else to give my brain some headspace for the next step, which is brainstorming. 

Thanks for reading! I'm curious about you. Do you have a life goal? How would you say it breaks down into themes? Let me know in the comments and please do give this chapter a star if you enjoyed it/found it interesting. :-)