Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want

Michael Hyatt and Daniel Harkavy 2016
Read: 2018
Education/Leadership, Non-Fiction

I am a big goal-setter. I find that I am much more focused and driven when I write down my goals or when I have target events to shoot for. If I have neither, I can kind of drift. This book caught my attention because it was recommended by many and it clearly focuses on the idea of drift and how to avoid it. I think the book I have relied on the most for goal-setting in the past has been my Steven Covey bible. This certainly relies on many of the tenets of Covey, but it is a new perspective.

Hyatt begins with the end in mind (that’s a definite Covey reference). In fact, he says start with the people who you think you would want to speak at your funeral. He asks what statements they would make in a eulogy about you, or more pertinently, what statements would you want them to make about you. So you have to think about your parents and your siblings and your spouse and your children and your friends and your work colleagues and the impact that you want to have. You could look at it as pretty depressing or you could look at it as just another way of looking at what’s important in life and how you need to refocus on that. He actually has you write those statements out.

Next, he relies on yet another Covey concept, the idea of the bank account. Covey talks about having to invest in a bank account so that when you mess up or when you don’t have time, or when you need something, those accounts are not only paid in full, but they have reserves in them for you to draw upon. Hyatt has you create “life accounts.” There’s a life account in my case for my spouse, for my children, for my parents, for my siblings, for my friends, for my work colleagues and you have to discuss what your target is with each of those and what your specific goals are for each of those life accounts. You also need to refer to the current state in those accounts. Again, it makes you think rather deeply about what is going on in all aspects of your life. This is where you might put bucket lists for all parts of your life in the goals section.

That is the bulk of the work. What comes next is a traditional goal-setting. But not only is it annual goals, but it is monthly and more importantly, weekly goals. So the end result is a process where each week, you look at all that you set forth in this process and determine what you can do that week to move forward or to maintain your progress towards improved relationships and goal targets.

It’s a fascinating approach and it took a lot of work. He suggests reserving at least two full days for all of this. I did it over winter break on some long flights that I had and in some other time that I had and then broke up into 3-hour chunks. I like it, I recommend it, and I will see if I go back to it next year after a full year of being with it.