Inspired by OTRs nips, I wanted to share something I did a few months ago that I found helpful, which is to perform a life audit in the format of a marketing plan.
Anyone who has ever done a marketing plan knows that things start off pretty abstract/high level, and then look to drill down on the details. I think it is a tremendous exercise for longer term (3 years max) planning. Once one reaches a certain age, I think that it can be quite helpful to perform an exercise like this.
I don't want to give my own one here, as it is obviously intensely personal.
However, the plan looks like this:
Executive summary - a no holds barred summary of yourself. You've got a couple of paragraphs to pitch yourself to someone, and like any business pitch, if you bullshit and pretend everything is wonderful you'll get no investment, so focus on the good, but don't forget to include the main skills gaps/core competencies you're looking to address. Think of it as a school report, it should be constructive, critical, and objective.
Strategic goals - these are your 3 year goals. Any longer and it's too far off to really be real. They can be shorter, but in my view you're really looking here to set ambitious but achievable targets based on where you are right now.
Competitor analysis - things outside your control that could place a serious barrier on you achieving what you're looking to achieve, or derail your progress.
SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, threats) - this is the chance to extol your virtues and be ruthless in identifying your flaws, as well as the opportunities that exist for your talents and the personal qualities that may actively hamper your progress towards your stated aims.
Financial analysis - Obvious. A thorough examination of your current fiscal position.
This is the high level stuff.
Then next comes the Action Plan.
1. Target Audience - identify who you are pitching yourself to and why.
2. Products and services - I used this section to work out all the ways I could add value to my target audiences.
3. Positioning and unique selling points - Quite important. How are you currently perceived, how does that fit with how you'd like to be perceived, and what are your key individual traits that differentiate you.
4. Driving engagement - This is a harder one as an adult, particularly (for example) if one of your high level goals is to add high quality men to your friendship group. What are you doing to make these people take an interest in you, how are you presenting yourself, how are you making sure they are aware of you?
5. Driving contact - it's too easy to have a conversation with an interesting fellow at a drinks party, and then be reticent about pushing to keep the contact and put in the time to cement a friendship. What are you doing to make sure (sticking with the male friendship example), once you identify someone suitable, you retain the initial interest and convert that person into a friend or active part of your peer group?
6. Action plan - When, what, target group, objective, cost. This is where you can really drill down on the little (sometimes tiny) steps you can take to move towards your larger goals.
7. Measuring success - reviews, regularly, on how you are performing against your action plan. Quantifying success (eg went for a beer subsequently with an interesting guy you met through a friend).
What's interesting about performing this exercise is that even if you think you're a bit of a stud, you may be surprised at just how passive you are in many areas of your life that you would unquestioningly deem important. Once you've filled in something like this, you don't really need to focus on the abstract goals very much - they are for periodic review. The important thing is to focus on the day to day stuff, the stuff you have control over, that can move you imperceptibly towards a larger, more nebulous goal.
Personally I found this a deceptively helpful exercise, and try to review my action plan on a weekly basis - who did I talk to who I might want to be more a part of my life, what steps did I take to reap the benefits their friendship/vagina/access to money might bring, etc etc.
I think as men we can be particularly bad at being proactive and energetic participants in our own lives. I was quite shocked at how passive I was relative to my talents, strengths, and opportunities.
The idea isn't to become some completely false caricature of what you feel a renaissance man looks like, and to have any success with this one must recognise one's limitations and weaknesses, as well as any unpalatable realities in one's life that make certain goals hard to achieve at certain times. The idea is to set ambitious, but attainable goals based on your current position and talents, and then to break those down from abstract ideas that are not terribly useful to you into small but actionable steps.
For me personally, one of my goals is to be more social than I am. I'm quite a sociable person when I do get out, but one of my more frustrating traits is that I am by nature pretty idle, meaning I squander a lot of the opportunities and talents nature has given me. A system like this makes me take steps to be less passive about things within my life that are entirely within my control. For example, reaching out to a friend I don't see that much of, or know that well, who is interesting, ambitious, and who has a great many pretty friends. He lives an hour or so from me, and I am off to see him on a weeknight after work to have a drink and to move the friendship along a little. Normally I'd take the view that actually this was all a bit too much effort for a weeknight and just let things drift.
Anyway, not a panacea, but done right potentially helpful to some.
Anyone who has ever done a marketing plan knows that things start off pretty abstract/high level, and then look to drill down on the details. I think it is a tremendous exercise for longer term (3 years max) planning. Once one reaches a certain age, I think that it can be quite helpful to perform an exercise like this.
I don't want to give my own one here, as it is obviously intensely personal.
However, the plan looks like this:
Executive summary - a no holds barred summary of yourself. You've got a couple of paragraphs to pitch yourself to someone, and like any business pitch, if you bullshit and pretend everything is wonderful you'll get no investment, so focus on the good, but don't forget to include the main skills gaps/core competencies you're looking to address. Think of it as a school report, it should be constructive, critical, and objective.
Strategic goals - these are your 3 year goals. Any longer and it's too far off to really be real. They can be shorter, but in my view you're really looking here to set ambitious but achievable targets based on where you are right now.
Competitor analysis - things outside your control that could place a serious barrier on you achieving what you're looking to achieve, or derail your progress.
SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, threats) - this is the chance to extol your virtues and be ruthless in identifying your flaws, as well as the opportunities that exist for your talents and the personal qualities that may actively hamper your progress towards your stated aims.
Financial analysis - Obvious. A thorough examination of your current fiscal position.
This is the high level stuff.
Then next comes the Action Plan.
1. Target Audience - identify who you are pitching yourself to and why.
2. Products and services - I used this section to work out all the ways I could add value to my target audiences.
3. Positioning and unique selling points - Quite important. How are you currently perceived, how does that fit with how you'd like to be perceived, and what are your key individual traits that differentiate you.
4. Driving engagement - This is a harder one as an adult, particularly (for example) if one of your high level goals is to add high quality men to your friendship group. What are you doing to make these people take an interest in you, how are you presenting yourself, how are you making sure they are aware of you?
5. Driving contact - it's too easy to have a conversation with an interesting fellow at a drinks party, and then be reticent about pushing to keep the contact and put in the time to cement a friendship. What are you doing to make sure (sticking with the male friendship example), once you identify someone suitable, you retain the initial interest and convert that person into a friend or active part of your peer group?
6. Action plan - When, what, target group, objective, cost. This is where you can really drill down on the little (sometimes tiny) steps you can take to move towards your larger goals.
7. Measuring success - reviews, regularly, on how you are performing against your action plan. Quantifying success (eg went for a beer subsequently with an interesting guy you met through a friend).
What's interesting about performing this exercise is that even if you think you're a bit of a stud, you may be surprised at just how passive you are in many areas of your life that you would unquestioningly deem important. Once you've filled in something like this, you don't really need to focus on the abstract goals very much - they are for periodic review. The important thing is to focus on the day to day stuff, the stuff you have control over, that can move you imperceptibly towards a larger, more nebulous goal.
Personally I found this a deceptively helpful exercise, and try to review my action plan on a weekly basis - who did I talk to who I might want to be more a part of my life, what steps did I take to reap the benefits their friendship/vagina/access to money might bring, etc etc.
I think as men we can be particularly bad at being proactive and energetic participants in our own lives. I was quite shocked at how passive I was relative to my talents, strengths, and opportunities.
The idea isn't to become some completely false caricature of what you feel a renaissance man looks like, and to have any success with this one must recognise one's limitations and weaknesses, as well as any unpalatable realities in one's life that make certain goals hard to achieve at certain times. The idea is to set ambitious, but attainable goals based on your current position and talents, and then to break those down from abstract ideas that are not terribly useful to you into small but actionable steps.
For me personally, one of my goals is to be more social than I am. I'm quite a sociable person when I do get out, but one of my more frustrating traits is that I am by nature pretty idle, meaning I squander a lot of the opportunities and talents nature has given me. A system like this makes me take steps to be less passive about things within my life that are entirely within my control. For example, reaching out to a friend I don't see that much of, or know that well, who is interesting, ambitious, and who has a great many pretty friends. He lives an hour or so from me, and I am off to see him on a weeknight after work to have a drink and to move the friendship along a little. Normally I'd take the view that actually this was all a bit too much effort for a weeknight and just let things drift.
Anyway, not a panacea, but done right potentially helpful to some.
