I’ve been talking about creating great personal stories for years now. I’ve written books about it and even host a conference helping people live more strategically. And now I’ve got a great tool that is helping me execute my stories more efficiently. It’s called a Personal Life Plan. You’ve probably heard about them, but my friend Mike Hyatt has given us a way to create a plan for free. Mike’s free e-book, Creating Your Personal Life Plan can be downloaded at his site. I think you just have to give him your name and address and it’s all yours. Mike won’t spam you, so don’t worry. And believe me, it’s worth it.
Here are several reasons to create a Personal Life Plan:
1. A personal Life Plan is a foundation: If you feel like your life is crumbling, it’s probably because you either have a foundation that isn’t quite strong enough or you’ve got too much weight on your foundation. Strengthening your foundation is accomplished through a clarification of values. What matters to you most? What do you really care about? What will matter in the end? All great questions, and all questions that strengthen our foundations.
2. A Personal Life Plan is a filter: If your foundation is already strong, another problem may involve taking on too much stuff. Either too many relationships, the wrong relationships, projects that aren’t aligned with who you are as a person or your personal values, or work that you could be delegating to somebody else. Creating a Life Plan automatically establishes a filter for your life. Because your values are clear, you will know much better what matters and what doesn’t, and you’ll be able to get some of the burden off your shoulders.
3. A Personal Life Plan gets you in touch with your heart: This is much more than a tool for busy executives. A Personal Life Plan helps you focus on what matters most: relationships. This is not a book about how to be more efficient, though it will accomplish that. The gist of a life plan involves strategically aiming your life toward a more fulfilling overall experience, setting great relationships as the primary aim.
4. A Personal Life Plan can create community: I decided not to do this exercise alone. I invited four of my friends into the process with me. We each printed out the book and met at my house to get started. The first exercise led us into a discussion about our funerals. We each talked about what we want our funerals to look like. The conversation was deep, powerful, and connected us as a group of friends. I was surprised at how some of my friends answered the question, and even more surprised at how I answered the question. We left with some homework, which will be obvious when you read through the book, and will be meeting again and again until we’ve gone through the entire book and each have our Personal Life Plans in order.
Please download Mike’s e-book, Creating Your Personal Life Plan, and also consider filling out your plan with your closest friends, your family, or even your colleagues. I’ll be using this resource for years. Very thankful to Mike for creating it and giving it to us for free.
Don,
How does this book fit in with your own personal views on creating ‘stories’ not ‘plans’ or ‘goals’?
I downloaded and have started working through Hyatt’s personal life plan. It helps you actively write your story. It asks where are you now and where do you want to be? It has you think about your funeral and what people will say about you when you die? It asks who is important in your life and what are you doing to enhance that relationship?
Dear Don,
I read Michael’s book. Michael seems like a great guy, and I look forward to meeting him someday. Maybe it’s just my gray hair showing, but as a follower of Jesus who’s ways are not our ways, I felt bad for Michael as I read. Yes, I get that he is a high-profile type-A concrete sequential like many of the wonderful folks (including my own pastor) on the book’s endorsement list. I also believe searching our hearts, planning and organization are good things, which I employ in my work.
To keep it short, from my experience:
He seems to truly have God as his co-pilot or flight engineer, and not in the captain’s seat.
Might God might have a different definition of what is a high-impact project… for Michael?
In the detailed 3-year plan he forgot to schedule for chemo, or a hundred other sudden unforeseeable life-changers that might lead us to reassess what’s really important, and who’s really in charge.
The Lord is very clear with me, and I’m regularly surprised at His way for my life.
Dear Brian,
We must not lose sight of the true value of a tool. It’s value is not wrapped up in the personality or practice of the designer as much as it lies in its application to our own life and work. Would you look at a hammer and say, “The guy who made this hammer was a list checker and enjoyed things that I could care less about, and he is clearly not the greatest carpenter who ever lived, so this hammer is worth less than no hammer.”?
My point is that we should evaluate a tool in light of its usefulness in our own work and practice.
When I read Michael’s book I wasn’t impressed that he was holding out his plan as a standard – it’s just an example of what the process can look like.
Also using this tool doesn’t define where God enters the process. Just like you can use a hammer to make all kinds of things, you can use this tool to make all kinds of a life. Ultimately, it’s the product not the tool that others will use to measure our life.
By the way, the greatest carpenter who ever lived is not remembered today for his carpentry skills but rather for investing his life in others. A tool that can help me be more like him is one I’ll gladly add to my tool belt.
Thanks for the uplifting perspective Andy. I will revisit this tool and see if I can’t find a positive use for it in my life. Take care, and God bless.
I wish I would have thought to do something like this when I was younger, although my goals and interests have changed (or in some cases been Divinely changed for me), and I’m not sure how much it would have mattered.
Another part of me is thinking about subsistence, surviving, and how that’s all so many people really have the option of doing. What does it look like to create goals while living in a subsistence culture?
Thank you.
Thanks Don! My husband and I will give this a go and I’m sure it will be a positive addition to our lives. Also, thanks for the introduction to Michael Hyatt. I have been perusing his website and it’s a wonderful tool for the hopeful writer (me) and businessman (my husband). Have a great day!
Thanks! I have been thinking about having an intentional direction for my life a lot lately and think that this could be helpful. These kinds if resources appeal to me a lot, because I sometimes personally feel overwhelmed by so many possibilities and wish someone (God, hopefully) would just tell me which direction to pursue.
Another part of me is really resistant to creating a plan for my life, because it seems to take away a lot of the mystery and spontaneity of living, maybe turning into more of a formula than a work of art. What if my values and passions and interests morph over time? Anyone else out there worked through this or have thoughts on it?
Thanks for this tool, it’s an easy way to prepare on our life’s plan. I finish you’re ebook and I need to start for put on paper my foughts and plans, I think this is the hardest part for me, because it’s not easy watch our future on paper, but it’s necessary for living on purpose.
In Mexico we said “Quiero trascender en mi vida y dejar huella en los demás sobre lo que hago y sobre quien soy”
Quiero hacer un commentario: No pienses mucho, escribelo y sabras que sera mas facil…sigue firme en tus decisiones…Dios te bendiga.
this is interesting, but I was not ready to walk away from Barbara Cartland…
Hi Don,
Wasn’t sure if you would read this, but I just read your Father Fiction book and you mentioned that there were a lot of great books about manhood. What would you recommend? I’m looking for great manhood books…
Thank you.
Well, obviusly I’m not Don, but I’ll make a stab at a recommendation. “Wild at Heart” might be a good place to start if you haven’t already read it.
I’m clearly not Don either, but my father has been doing a lot of study of this lately, and two books he has recommended are Why Men Hate Going to Church, and The Map, both by David Murrow. I haven’t yet had a chance to read either of them, but he speaks very highly of them. Hope that is helpful.
There is a piece of me that absolutely cringes at this stuff and writes it off immediately. Then there is another piece of me that remembers that great stories and great lives are focused ones with goals.
I don’t think you can live well or even follow Jesus well without setting some kind of goal and then working towards it. Maybe the title “life plan” sounds a bit too corporate for me but I am sure the thought behind it is helping people live great lives. And so to that I say “bravo!”
I recently set a goal to blog through the whole Bible chapter by chapter. Twelve down and 1177 to go!
WOW! I blogged each day about as I read the Bible through in 365 days. I thought that was a long commitment…that doesn’t even hold a candle to you.
My experience was incredible, life changing, and God met me in unimaginable ways.
May you be blessed beyond measure and in unexpected ways as you search, seek, and grow in Him.
“And if you search for Me with all your heart, you will find Me,” declares the Lord. “I will let you find Me.” Jer. 29:13-14
[...] 04 Apr Despite many objections to his writing, I still have Donald Miller on my RSS feed, and this morning he recommended downloading an e-book called Creating Your Personal [...]
This post is enough for me to delete your blog from my RSS feeds. I think I’ve realised recently, Don, that you’re not really at all separated from the self-help Christianity I despise and never used to associate with you. I don’t mean to hate, I honestly don’t, and I don’t mean to be discouraging either. I just get a little confused – this doesn’t feel like the Donald Miller I used to read.
[...] I noticed Donald Miller recently blogged about creating a personal life plan and this would be a great read for those of you who enjoyed this post. He also featured a way to receive a FREE download of [...]
I think if this is a “Sponsored Post,” as it seems to be, it should be labeled as such, otherwise this kind of thing could be confusing or misleading for your readers unless it’s more clearly labeled.
I wish that this had been a joke like “Love Wins.” Our life plans cannot be dictated by ourselves. In fact, I believe God likes to use us most when we’re vulnerable and depending on his direction. Our values and direction are in the Bible. Jesus never had his disciples sit down and write out a personal life plan. Their plan was Jesus, and so is ours. We follow him into desserts and the margins, wherever the Spirit leads us. Human plans and formulas are so completely un-Biblical and un-Jesus-like.
Still a fan, still reading the blog, sir.
April Fools jokes only count on the 1st, not the 4th. Right? RIGHT?
Such cynicism and hostility in a couple of comments… seems so unnecessary. Is the intention to shame or humiliate Don into being the blogger you want him to be?! I can’t see any other reason for posts that denigrate Don’s purposes or intentions for a blog that he writes for free and doesn’t really need to do at all.
If you decide not to read someone’s RSS feed anymore, there is no need to tell them why beyond possibly saying that it doesn’t suit you, and then only IF they ask, which they won’t because they won’t know.
I don’t understand people’s need to be hurtful when they don’t like something that is freely given and has no effect on their lives other than information. Whatever happened to “If you don’t have anything nice to say, say nothing at all.”? Requested critiques of course being a different situation.
I doubt Don is sponsored to recommend this book to his readers. More likely Don thought “Hey what a neat tool this can be! I will share it with my readers! Perhaps they too will find it useful!”
Don, I don’t love every post you put out there for us, but I love that you say what you think and let us choose to read those thoughts or not as we like. Most posts I find illuminating and thought provoking, or funny and insightful. In any case, I think they are always heartfelt. Thank you for what you do.
Well… generally speaking, what your proposing makes for very poor discussion. It’s important that as individuals we feel the freedom to speak our minds in a clear and coherent way – whether we agree or disagree. I doubt very much that Don put the comment section here just so that we could all drop off the occasional word of praise, encouragement, and agreement every so often.
You say that the appropriate forum for disagreeing words is in a requested critique – I think that’s exactly what this is.
Like I say, I do not mean to discourage or come across as hateful (I certainly don’t hate Don), I just felt it was alright to offer my views on this post, and how it made me feel.
I agree with Nathan…I little too “self-helpish” for Don and borders on too much formula.
Still love the blog and Don though!
I was actually creating my own “life plan” about an hour before I coincidentally stumbled upon this blog of which I frequent every so often. It wasn’t untill I started reading the comments that I relialized my heart’s convictions were true.
An hour ago I googled “life Plan” without realizing what it was, or who Mr. Hyatt was. I had just heard about it somewhere. After I got into it I started writing down my goals and visions. As I began reading through Mr Hyatts ideas, I started to feel like corporate america had just slapped slogans and proaganda all over me.
Don’t get me wrong setting goals and even writing them down in a journal is fine, but this is just way over the top. Just reading this book about potential dreams and success is just nonsense and waste of life. I’m sure 100 years ago, people would have just laughed at you if you said… “hey man, I just finished writing my life plan”. your life what? The rhetoric in this book by Mr. Hyatt is on par with the hyped corporate logos of “green” and “sustainable”.
How about following the truth that resides in your heart and relying on the Holy spirit to guide you? Exercise some self control and BAM life plan mystery solved…. need to lose weight? stop eating twinkies and hit the gym. Need to have a better marriage and fam life? stop working yourself to the bone and spend time with your wife and kids. The answers are there all time, you just have to investigate where your heart is. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Now having just admitted that I fell for this stuff myself, I don’t put any blame on Don or make false accusations about the motivation behind this post. As I have read Dons writings over the years, I have come to believe that Don is a very genuine person as it shows through the transparency and sincerety of his words. He is a good man and I will continue to read.
OK, in the last months I really wanted to order my life, but everytime I found a lame excuse to not do it. Now, I will see on my wall this e book and it will remind me of this, so I can’t escape anymore. Thanks.