The Life OS - A flexible, forgiving system for keeping life on track

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. My hope is that it will help others spend less time fretting and more time with family and friends this holiday season. Check it out, and let me know what you think! Cheers 🍻 T.S.