Life OS: Strategic Planning Framework

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A simple, flexible and forgiving tool for strategic planning

Why I created the Life OS

With the new year rapidly approaching, I find myself spending a lot of time reflecting on my values, my vision for my life and my goals for the coming year. If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably struggled to keep a grasp on these questions even in the best of times. And, of course, the last couple of years have not been the best of times.

Throughout my life, I’ve attempted various solutions: day planners, task management apps, complicated frameworks with specialized, esoteric (and expensive) tools. All in an effort to maintain what you might call “strategic focus” — a consistent self-awareness of what I value, what I want, how I’m getting there and how I’m progressing along the path toward my own pinnacle of self-fulfillment.

The results have been ... disappointing 😮‍💨

Day planners and task management apps are built for the toss and tussle of the day to day. They don’t address our longer-term visions or goals. Meanwhile, strategic planning frameworks tend toward the rigid and inflexible. Their top-down approach doesn’t allow for optionality and, in a world so quickly changing, sets us up for disappointment and self-loathing.

For all these reasons, I decided to build my own strategic planning framework, which would synthesize the best elements of other systems I’d used and discarded through the years. This tool, which I call my “Life Operating System,” is what you’re exploring now. It presents a simple, flexible and forgiving framework for deciding where you are going in life, charting a path toward this vision and growing progressively more focused and self-aware on your journey getting there.

If you want to get a deeper sense of my philosophy on planning, you should read this post by Tayler Pearson, which informed the development of this tool:

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How to use this tool

The Life OS is built around a few key concepts, which I’ve outlined below.

Planning Worksheets — Planning worksheets present a framework for visualization, planning and evaluation over the quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily time horizons. Worksheets for the current period are created automatically each morning and will be accessible on the

Agenda⁠

tab. Past plans can be found in the

Archives⁠

Daily P&E Sessions — Daily planning and evaluation (”P&E”) is the core ritual of the OS. This is when you’ll head to the

Agenda⁠

tab each morning, complete your planning worksheets, reflect on performance during the prior period and plan for the days, weeks and months ahead.

Quarterly Projects — Folks much smarter than me (read “scientists”) have suggested 12 weeks is the sweet spot for planning and evaluation. For this reason, the OS is built around a quarterly strategic planning cycle. Each quarter, you will choose a single, falsifiable goal (or “project”) for each Life Domain you’ve configured on the

Setup⁠

tab.

Objectives — While projects are your big-picture initiatives for each quarter, objectives are the granular steps that will move you toward them. You’ll set objectives for each month, week and day. These objectives, along with the projects toward which they relate, will always be visible on the

Agenda⁠

tab.

Process Goals — Process goals are a powerful tool that can help us achieve our longer-term objectives, so we’ve baked them into the core of our OS. Every time you create a new quarterly project, you’ll be asked to set some process goals (also known as

Habits⁠

) that will help you achieve them. You’ll record your performance during daily P&E and can get a visual overview on the

Trends⁠

tab.

Principles — Think of these as your Standard Operating Procedures for life. Build your own library of SOP’s on the

Principles⁠

tab, so that you can keep them top of mind.

Anyone should be able to start using the Life OS and, with a very small investment of time, feel more intentional, hopeful and self-aware. That said, I’ve also built this entire system on

Coda⁠

— which means that you can extend, integrate and customize it to your heart’s content.

How to get your copy

Similar planning tools cost as much as $100. I’m making the Life OS available for a one-time fee of $30, because I want to help other people avoid the same frustrations I’ve encountered while trying to bring order to my own life.

Please take a moment to explore this demo and, when you’re ready to snag a copy for yourself, use the payment form below. A doc invite will be emailed to the address you provide at checkout, at which point you’ll be able to create your own private copy of the template by navigating to the

Setup⁠

tab.

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If you like what you see, please consider giving us some lover over on product hunt, as well 🙏

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Why I created the Life OS

How to use this tool

How to get your copy

Like us on Product Hunt

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