Sep
Lifestyle Design - A Framework And Guide To The Blogosphere That Will Help You Do It
Photo by Exothermic
If you’re reading this blog post and you follow this blog then the chances are that you, like me, are a bit of a blog addict and also probably a blogger yourself - or thinking about it!
But if the past few months back in the corporate world have taught me anything, it’s that the vast majority of people in the real world still don’t ‘get’ blogs yet alone follow any (and probably save themselves a huge amount of time in the process or waste it on something else).
Having spent the best part of 3 months being forced to take a step back from the blogosphere, I’ve had to get brutal with my feedreader and cull my feeds down to a bare minimum of the ones I really do want to read.
My criteria for the great big blog cull? Does this blog continually add value to my life and help me achieve the things I want to achieve or is it just fluff? Know how many made the cut? Just 6 (out of over 100).
But what does streamlining a feed reader have to do with lifestyle design?
Thanks to Mr. Ferriss, the “cult” of lifestyle design is becoming big business. When we first started living this lifestyle of live and work from anywhere, there was a dearth of any of that kind of information about how to do what we’re doing - but now we’re close to drowning in information overload.
The question is: Out of all the of blogs out there, which are worth following and which are not?
Before I answer that question, there’s a framework to this post however which is important to grasp and it goes like this…
In order to design your own lifestyle, you basically need to assess all aspects of your existing life and then figure out how you’d like each one to be.
To steal a basic framework from management consulting, in order to achieve a lifestyle of your design, you need to:
- Do an “As Is” analysis of your current lifestyle
- Define the “To Be” model for your desired lifestyle
- Figure out how to move from the As Is to the To Be
And here’s how you get started…
Analysing the As Is
Look at where you are in all areas of your life. For starters, you probably want to look at the following:
- Health - how healthy are you? How do you feel?
- Money & Assets - what do you have? What don’t you have?
- Professional/Career - what do you do? How much time do you spend doing it? What do you know?
- Family, Friends & Social - who do you know? Who do you spend time with?
- Travel, Leisure & Lifestyle - what do you spend your leisure time doing? If you had to describe your lifestyle in a sentence, what would you say?
I’m sure there are others but understanding where you currently stand in each of the above areas is a good starting point for analysing what your lifestyle looks like today.
Defining the To Be
Not happy with where you are today? Time to re-design your life. Rather than dive right in and make whole sale changes to the things you’re not happy with now is the time to take a step back, look at the bigger picture and do this strategically.
If you don’t know where you want to end up, then where you do end up may not be what you want in the first place. So take the time to think about where you’d like to be in each of the areas, as follows:
- Health - how healthy do you want to be? How do you want to feel?
- Money & Assets - what do you need to have? What do you want to have?
- Professional/Career - what do you want to do? How much time do you want to spend doing it? What do you want to know?
- Family, Friends & Social - who do you want to know? Who do/don’t you want to spend time with?
- Travel, Leisure & Lifestyle - what do you want to spend your leisure time doing? If you had to describe your lifestyle in a sentence, what would you want to be able to say?
Getting from the As Is to the To Be
Now you’ve understood your starting point and where you want to be, it’s time to start making changes and moving from A to B.
This is where the blogsphere comes in…but rather than get bogged down in reading a hundred feeds every day, you need to be more selective and follow only the blogs which help you move from A to B in each area that you’d like to make a change.
So this is not a list of a hundred blogs you should be reading but probably aren’t, more like a gentle reminder to focus on the quality that’s out there and not the quantity:
Health
As a former personal trainer and holistic health coach, I know a thing or two about how to achieve optimal health (and it’s not how most people do it). The following blogs and websites share the same philosophy and provide good quality, practical information.
Money & Personal Finance
I’m not brilliant with numbers - in fact I completely failed an interview with Capital One once because I couldn’t even do the mathematical case study required at the first round interview. These blogs however are realistic, practical and not-at-all scary if you’re not good with numbers and the concept of personal finance and money usually has you heading for a dark room.
Professional Career & Business
Stay in the corporate world and improve your experience there/achieve your dream role:
Leave the corporate world & run your own business:
- Escape from Cubicle Nation
- Springwise (for business ideas)
- Ittybiz (for small business marketing)
- Sproutwire (for the best small business articles)
Take an existing business online and/or run a business from anywhere:
- Ours!
- Entrepreneur’s Journey
- Conversation Marketing (Common Sense Internet Strategies)
- Web Worker Daily
Travel As A Lifestyle
When it comes to lifestyle design, many people cite freedom to travel as their ideal lifestyle. We have been there and done that and it’s certainly our ideal lifestyle - if it’s yours too, then these are the blogs we recommend.
- Ours!
- Vagabondish
- Vagablogging
This post is not about encouraging you to stop reading blogs altogether - it’s about being selective. You can so easily fall into the trap of feeling like you’re moving from A to B because you’re reading about how to do it on a blog. Let me tell you from experience though: You’re not!
Once you know which areas of your life you need to make changes in to achieve your ideally designed lifestyle, use the highest quality resources you can find (books, blogs, coaches/mentors, courses, programs, forums) to help you move from A to B. Let us know which resources you use in the comments…
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An Update About The New Book & The Launch Of The Forum:
Most of you know that I’m writing a new book, as a follow-up to the first one. Unfortunately because of the temporary day job, there’s been a delay in completing the book but I’m expecting to have it ready for official publication by the end of October.
As part of the launch however, we will also be launching our new private forum for location independent professionals like us. As an experiment - and because the book isn’t ready yet and we’d also like to start building up the community on the forum - here’s the deal we’re offering:
Pre-purchase the new book now and get free membership of the forum until you receive the book (and a further 30 days membership once you receive it). If you’re interested, find out more here >>>
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Related posts:
- A Post About Lifestyle Design With Some Nuggets Of Wisdom (I Hope)
- This Is How I’d Design My Ideal Lifestyle; Now How About Yours?
- A Brief Guide To The Philippines As Your Next Location Independent Destination
- Guide Book Chapters
- Launching…The LIP Destinations Guide
Trackbacks & Pingbacks
- Pingback by Location Independent Living | ExecutiveHacks.com on September 3, 2008 @ 5:35 am
- Pingback by Recent Faves Tagged With "location" : MyNetFaves on September 19, 2008 @ 2:20 pm
Lea–Long time no “comment….” This is a great post to me for two reasons: 1) I am actively in the middle of this process right now and 2) your go-to sites are a little different than mine.
If I can add anything, my process involves two weekly meetings with myself, fully scheduled on the calendar. One of them is usually dedicated to dreaming and letting influences emerge as they will, followed by logging what consistently comes up. The second focuses on execution and action items to steer the process in a tangible way, from the boring four square competitive analysis to budgeting to needling at potential business outlines.
Thanks for your continued work. I look forward to reading the new book.
Sean
Lea,
I am honoured to have my blog make your list of suggested reads. At the same time your note about culling your feed list inspires me to improve the quality of my work to be sure to give readers something interesting all the time.
I am also happy to have been introduced to your work and look forward to following it in the future.
Best of luck.
David Hutchison
Executivehacks.com
Great post, Lea.
This is very timely. I have recently pared down my blog feeds because for the most part following the bulk of them was more of a hindrance than any sort of productivity boost. Also, like David’s comment above, this will drive me to improve my content, (only in my case, to make the list :o) )
I’m looking forward to the next book!
Take care,
ZenSatori
ProjectNomad.com
Sean - great to hear from you again (sorry for delayed response, having a nightmare here in SA). Love the idea of meetings with yourself - Jonathan and I do something similar in that we have weekly meetings talking about our dreams/goals/plans and then figuring out what we need to do to achieve them.
David - thanks for stopping by and for your blog. Having spent a fair bit of time researching & reviewing relevant ones on this topic, yours stood out.
ZenSatori - I agree, following so many feeds is such a time suck and if you spent half that time following half as many and then the rest of the that time taking action, most of us would be *way* more effective and productive than we are (well, I would at least!!).
Fantastic post, Lea! I’ve been meaning to trim the fat from my feed reader for quite a while now but this has given me the swift kick in the arse to actually do it.
I stumbled onto your site/blog this morning over coffee! This is a ‘wow’ moment! I have just recently lost my job and my 8 yr relationship all in the past 2 weeks! Talk about yuk. I believe this is happening for a reason, just not sure what that is yet. I have been ‘dreaming’ of a lifestyle change and going out on my own for quite some time. Funny thing, is that i have an opportunity to go back into the ‘corporate’ world and my whole body is resisting it. Must be a good reason. I read through your ‘Lifestyle Design’ and will start my homework this weekend. I have 2 kids, 13 and 15yrs, that will hold me solid in Vancouver for some time. I figure this will give me the time to plan and strategise! Love your site and your ideas!
Melissa - thanks so much for your feedback on the site.
I’m sorry to hear of the tough times you’ve been going through recently but as the saying goes: when one door closes, a window opens (or something like that!).
Hopefully you did some ‘homework’ this weekend - did you come up with anything?
Lea,
Thanks for including my site in your list.
I just stumbled upon this blog post and read this line: “Does this blog continually add value to my life and help me achieve the things I want to achieve or is it just fluff?”
After reading it I was in the process of mulling over how I can continue to bring quality, valuable content to my readers when I was very pleased to find my own blog included in your list. How refreshing!
Thanks again, and keep up the great work!
Mark Sisson