“You can’t know where you are going until you know where you are.” - From the book Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans

How is it going with your New Years’ resolution and goals list?

Frankly said I don’t make those resolutions anymore. I don’t see a point in saying that in the new year I am working out five times a week, stop drinking wine, learn coding and Arabic, and so on. Merely listing those things isn’t effective anymore. Because it doesn’t guide me step by step to achieving those goals. And it also doesn’t consider the joy I can have with just the process to get there. In German, we have a beautiful proverb that goes “Der Weg ist das Ziel”, which means the journey is the destination. And that’s a reminder for you all: enjoy the journey!

I like to focus on creating processes and habits that will help me transform my lifestyle. Of course, goal setting is motivating and supports having a clear picture of your whished outcomes but only by writing down some goals, you probably won’t be achieving them.

I want to share something with you that I find extremely helpful when you’re at the beginning of finding out how to design your new year. Yes, I said designing! My source is a fantastic book I can only recommend to you. It’s called Designing Your Life, How to Build a Well-lived, Joyful Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. (You can buy it here e.g.)

It’s an exercise that starts with knowing where you are right now. It will help you to identify the challenges you want to approach. Look at it as an assessment. I’ve worked in leadership for a few years and any solution to a problem starts with assessing the current state.

You can do it on any day of the year. The important thing is that you do it. So, this little assessment asks you to write down in a few sentences how is it going with your health, your work, your play, and love (HWPL). Let me talk a bit more about those areas to make sure we are talking about the same.

HEALTH - How is the state of your physical, mental, and emotional health? Health is the foundation of your life.

WORK - Work relates to the jobs you do and get paid for but also to your involvement in any other work you do; e.g. I work as a digital marketer but also invest time in coaching and mentoring a small group of people around me. I’m also an artist and communicate with the world by creating illustrations and paintings. I’m writing this blog to share my knowledge etc. …

PLAY - Think of the things you LOVE to do. Things you cannot live without, that bring joy and fun into your life. Those things should be free from any expectations like getting recognition or paid for them. For me, that’s dancing. I’m by no means a great dancer and I’m not a fan of learning any steps and choreographies. All I want is to move my body to music and express myself. I feel free when doing it. Or painting. The reason why I need to paint is that it’s my personal way to meditate and calm myself.

LOVE - Love refers to all the human connections you have. Your family, friends, lovers, partners and so on.

The book uses a car’s dashboard to visualise how full each of those areas can be. I personally prefer to use colours to visualise that. There is no way around colouresko ;-).

RED - It doesn’t feel like I’m paying a lot of attention to this area of my life, I’m running out of fuel. My tank is almost empty.

ORANGE - My tank is half full which keeps me going but soon it needs more fuel very soon. I need to do something.

YELLOW - I’m doing fine as my tank is 3/4 full but as it’s not 100%, I still need to do something.

GREEN - My tank is fuel. ’m doing great. Let’s keep it that way.

Above you will find a Word template you can use to start writing and evaluating how you are doing in each area. Once you finished the writing, save this information on your computer. Review it a day or two later and ask yourself if are you happy with the status? What is it that you want to change and improve? What is the problem you are facing in that area? Is it a problem you can solve? Some people don’t do that type of thinking and analysing work but you did! Well done! You have just started to become more aware of yourself, your life, and where you are right now. I will share some more tips and come back to this exercise in one of my next blogs. Feel free to leave your questions in the comments section or reach out to me.