What Is Lifestyle Design and How To Get Started?

Tim Ferris wrote about lifestyle design over a decade ago when he published “The 4-Hour Work Week”. Lifestyle design is the process of intentionally crafting a life that aligns with your values, passions, and dreams. It’s about taking control of your life and creating the life you want to live.

A surprising number of people don’t design their life but will spend months designing their home or holiday. Your future does not need to look like your parents’ current reality. It can be different. Do you know what’s even better? You don’t have to wait for the ‘future’ to happen before allowing yourself to enjoy your life, you can experiment with your ideal life right now.

At the start of the year (2023), I wrote about what my ideal day looked like. I went to into detail and stopped when I couldn’t write anymore. Afterwards, a thought struck me: “What can I do today, that I’ve written here?”. I took out a pink highlighter and highlighted everything I could implement within a day. It shocked me to see how much pink was on the page.

I realized I didn’t need to wait to earn a certain amount of money to do the morning routine my future-self does because I could do it tomorrow! The same goes with my evening routine. The same goes with how I interact with my husband and kids. You get the picture. This is a powerful exercise to design your life. If you want to dive deeper into how I did it, you can read the article I wrote here: Why You Are Probably More Successful Than You Think

Here are the key principles of lifestyle design:

• Focus on your values: What is important to you? What do you want to stand for?
• Identify your passions: What are you passionate about? What makes you feel alive?
• Set clear goals: What do you want to achieve in your life?
• Develop a plan: How will you achieve your goals?
• Take action: Start making changes to your life today.

When you become the driver of your life, you will experience increased happiness and fulfillment, improved relationships, and a sense of freedom. Lifestyle design is an ongoing journey, not a destination. It requires effort to evaluate and adjust your actions to make sure you are living in alignment with your values and goals.

We live in a world of instant gratification, so working hard on something that is not presenting instant results can feel pointless.

I find it helpful to think of this conversation between a mother and a daughter: The daughter says she is not sure she wants to become a doctor because it means she will only graduate when she is 29 years old. The mother replies, “You are going to be 29, anyway. You might as well be a doctor.” Don’t worry about how long it will take. The days will pass whether or not you are working towards your goals.

Here are some tips for getting started with lifestyle design:

1. Reflect on your current life: What are you happy with? What do you want to change?
2. Define your ideal lifestyle: What does your dream life look like? Where do you live? Write it all down, from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to sleep.
3. Set SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
4. Create a plan: How will you achieve your goals? How much money do actually you need to earn per day to live this lifestyle? *Hint: It’s probably a lot less than you think.
5. Take action: Start making changes today.
6. Journal everyday: What are you proud of yourself for doing today? What can you improve on? What can you do tomorrow that will bring you closer to your goals?

A couple of hours spent designing your life is one of the best investments you will ever make. You will be surprised to see how much you can start doing right away. Remember that this is your ideal life and it will look different to your family and friends.

As with anything worth working on, just focus on the process and the results will take care of themselves.

Thank you so much for reading! Leave me a comment below to share your thoughts, I read them all.