Three Versions of Future You
Solving the Problem of Not Knowing What You Want
What if you don't know what you want?
Not knowing what you want can be really painful. Especially if you’ve spent years trying to figure it out without much to show for it.
It’s horrible, because if you don’t know what you want, you’re stuck in this endless loop of wanting to start, but on what? You may read more books, take more courses, go to more conferences. And, still you don’t know what you want.
Is it possible that your uncertainty and lack of moving forward are attached to the guiding belief that you need to narrow things down, decide, and then go? Or, are you worried about making a mistake and investing too much time going in the wrong direction? Do you want to be clear before you begin so you don’t look foolish?
These are all guiding principles that make sense on the surface, but they keep you stuck because they stop you from getting started.
Designing Your Way Forward
In the book Designing Your Life, Stanford professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans lay out a plan to design your life. At the heart of this is the idea that we get stuck when we think we need to decide on one thing and go for it. In fact, their research shows that those of us who start with just one idea, 1) have a hard time getting started, and then 2) when we do, we keep refining the same idea over and over, never really innovating, even when our idea isn’t working.
When it doesn’t work right away, we attach all sorts of meaning to it – we’re failures, we don’t have what it takes, we can’t have meaningful work and pay the bills, ‘dreams come true’ are for others, not for us.
What if there are multiple possibilities?
Instead of pursuing that one great idea, they suggest sketching out several possibilities and reframing your search as a journey or a quest. As you imagine multiple ways forward, your curiosity is ignited, the different ideas inform each other, and you remain open to possibilities. Each option fuels your journey in different ways at different times. The result is steady movement forward.
This is a foundational wayfinding principle – that discovery happens on the journey. You don’t wait for the perfect idea to begin. You begin now, with what you have. You create a sketch and hold it loosely by creating a hypothesis (or three) and you experiment your way forward. Each step informs the next. You think and you also act.
With multiple possibilities, you stop waiting and begin. You hold your vision so you are heading towards it, but you open to possibilities along the way. It feels so good to get started.
Three Very Different Plans
Your challenge is to come up with three very different versions of you. Don’t develop variations on a theme or different versions of the same thing – live in a cabin in the woods, move to an ashram (kinda the same thing). Here are the three things: 1) What you’re doing now, but extended forward, 2) the thing you’d do if your first choice suddenly disappeared, 3) the left-field thing that you believe you’d get side-eye for:
Three Versions of You
Create three versions of you:
- It’s five years from now. Future You looks back on present day you. How did this version of you unfold? What happened? How did you start? What advice would Future You give to Current You?
- Create a six-word title that describes the essence of the version.
- What lights you up about this version of you? What’s possible? What would this path mean for your life and your life’s work?
- What else?
- Repeat this for each version.
Create a Dashboard.
Create a dashboard to compare your alternatives. Here are some ideas to consider. Rate them from 1 – 10:
Resources: Do you currently have the time, money, energy to pursue this? How might you create the space for this?
I like it! Now that you look at it, how much do you like it? Do you really like it, or are you lukewarm?
Confidence: What is your confidence level that you can do this?
Coherence: Does this fit with your values, your view of how you see your life and your work unfolding?
Making Money: Do you need it to make money? If so, how much? How long will it take? Are you being too optimistic or not optimistic enough?
Permission slip to explore.
This is a basic framework to help you feel out this approach. It’s most likely that you’ll spend a majority of your time figuring out #1. #2 might get 30% of your time, and #3 might get 10% of your time. The goal isn’t to make them all equal but to put them all on the table. For me, it takes pressure off of #1. It makes me more creative. I start seeing how they’re connected in ways that I hadn’t before.
Do you feel a shift?
Create a group, talk to a friend, hire a guide or a coach (self-serving plug!). See what shifts and changes as you explore these ideas.
How do you react when you consider this way of moving forward? Does developing three alternatives create any shifts in you? Do you feel like getting unstuck is within the realm of possibility? Check in with your body – are there any sensations that are new? What fears come up? Are you experiencing the discomfort of growth or the intuition that something isn’t quite right?
Can you go back up to the belief at the top of the page and see if it still seems true? Can you create a new belief that serves you better?
How about your values? Have you articulated them lately? Or ever? Values can be guide posts as you find your way. They can be allies when you need to make a decision. I’ve devised a really simple way to sketch out your values. If you want to go deeper you can, but this sketch of your values can be useful until then.
Source: Designing Your Life, by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.
