Life Support Framework: A structured approach to life
We endow great care to our organizations and products with rigorous processes like strategic planning, management review, and proliferation of others. Why don’t we leverage these same inventions to our own benefit? After all, each of us is a mini-organization run by multiple selves.
The ideal self is how we want to be, and the real self is who we are. It’s easy to elevate the ideal self but changing the real one can be very challenging. One may find himself deeply inspired by Arnold Schwarzenegger and unable to resist the slightest temptation of potato chips at the same time. Even after we manage to fight the real self with great willpower and tenacity, unexpected harsh realities can shove our soul into the dark abyss at any moment.
Here I introduce a system for personal development called the Life Support Framework. By borrowing concepts from modern management, the framework describes who we want to be and what we want to achieve. It then supports us in fighting bad habits and emotions with disciplines, and protects us through difficult times with guidance and friend networks.
The Life Support Framework was developed over the years as I tried to run myself and my companies well. It can be a powerful tool for those who have a strong soul and a determined mind but lack a systemic approach. I hope with it you can turn high-aiming dreams into reality.
The framework consists of six components, each described in a section below. Because every individual’s situation is unique, I encourage you to customize it to your style and need.
Vision: The end goal
We start by envisioning an ultimate purpose and then work backward to figure out a plan. A vision defines the pursuit of one’s whole life like a North Star. People with great achievements are usually not those who run fast but those who move in the same direction for a long time. Let’s start with an example vision:
Vision: Send my future generations to MarsI’m not saying it has to be as grandeur as occupying a planet. “Travel to every country in the world” and “help my children do their best” are great ones. You are the only judge of your vision.
The important thing is to set a mission that is altruistic and extremely difficult to attain. Otherwise, one can get confused easily or even loss their life. There can be more than one vision, but three or more might be far-fetching unless for superhumans like Elon Musk.
Take your time to come up with a vision for it’s the most important matter. Creating and revising it over time is a process of self-discovery and soul search. It may take years in traveling, relationship, and other types of exploration before a young person settles in at a satisfying viewpoint. I found many successful people had their visions set early on.
Once a vision is created, guard it with all your might.
Principles: Operations manual
Ray Dalio’s book Principles is a fascinating read. Principles state a person’s non-negotiable values and rules. They guide us to good decisions when facing tough choices in work and life.
Rule-based decisions can be made purely logical, free from bias, emotions, and other causes of irrationality. One can then knowingly combine these decisions with intuition into a conclusion, rather than letting subjectivity affects their analytical part of the process.
Principles reflect our belief systems. They should rarely change once created. Write down important things that you would refuse to trade even at difficult times. Struggles and pains are great occasions where new principles emerge. Below are some random examples:
Principles:* Be open-minded and learn from others
* Appreciate diversity in thinking
* Minimize carbon footprint on Mars
* Do not sacrifice people's lives
* ...
Our mind can make unconscious decisions that work against our will. Reduce them by often referring back to and get reminded of your principles. Be sure to record violations of these principles so that you can learn from mistakes (see “Root Cause Analysis log”).
Roadmap: Navigation for the long haul
In Product Management, roadmaps depict what features to be built at what times. It is the result of careful studies of opportunities and obstacles in and around the company and devising the best strategy forward.
Similarly, a personal roadmap lays out milestones toward personal goals. In designing a roadmap, one uses the information about the environment and themselves to plan the best attack angle. Although there is no shortage of tools and tactics for corporate strategies which can be applied to personal planning (SWOT, PEST, competition analysis to name a few), the making of a personal roadmap can be less analytical and more intuition-driven.
People are predictively bad at predicting so the roadmap shouldn’t stretch into more than a few years. As the same time, it should be far enough to help us wade through present struggles and distractions. Here is an example roadmap:
Roadmap:* Become a Mars expert by next Fall
* Complete my 3D printed rockets in two years
* Intern at an aerospace firm
Revise your roadmap as you make progress or external factors change. Ideally, it should lay out the most direct path toward your vision at all times.
OKRs: Metrics and accountability
OKR, or Objectives and Key Results, is a management system invented by Intel. It has become a central tool in many Silicon Valley companies to connect people’s actions into one unified direction. In the context of personal development, I found it useful in tracking progress for myself.
In essence, ORKs are three to five things one hopes to accomplish in a given timeframe. These things are called “objectives.” Under each objective, there can be a few key results showing what the outcome should look like upon the objective’s completion.
All these items should be time-bound and quantitatively measurable for you to track them objectively. The timeframe is usually a quarter. Longer ones many introduce greater inaccuracy in estimation due to increased uncertainty. Shorter ones may cause too much overhead.
OKR, Q3 2018:Objective 1: Get accepted by the Young Mars Explorer program
Key results:
* Apply by Sept. 21
* Collect three reference letters
* Connect and schedule a meeting with Program DirectorObjective 2: Complete design of 3D printed rocket engine
* ......
At the end of each quarter, grade yourself by measuring how much you’ve done on the OKRs. Pat yourself on the back if it’s close to 70%. Improve your estimation or execution if it’s too high or too low, and then log your learnings (see “Root Cause Analysis log”).
Put together vision, roadmap, and OKRs
These three concepts describe the same thing but at different levels. Vision is intentionally ambitious and vague; OKRs are concrete and actionable; roadmap lies in-between connecting the two. They work together to provide you with big pictures and low-level guide. They also differ in time scales. As a rule of thumb:
Vision is for the entire lifetime. Roadmap spans one to three years. OKRs are to be revised on a quarterly basis.
These components should be consistent with each other with lower-level goals supporting higher-level ones. Perfecting them requires practice. Your mentor network might provide the experience you need (see “Life Support Team”).
Root Cause Analysis log: the Troubleshooting guide
It’s similar to “error logs” in Dalio’s book, but I found “Root Cause Analysis log” or RCAs indicates the purpose better. It’s a record of past failures combined with notes tracing down to root causes and preventative mechanisms against similar mistakes in the future. My creation of RCAs was inspired by the Five-Whys method introduced by Toyota.
By asking Whys repetitively, we can find the fundamental cause of a problem which usually lies in the weaknesses of our real selves. Then, we install external triggers, fences, scaffolds, and all we can to fight the inherent weaknesses until good habits form. We write down these interventions as part of the RCA:
RCA, July 1, 2018:* What happened
30 mins late for bedtime.* Whys
1. Was on FB for 30 mins when I shouldn't.
2. Needed to set the alarm but opened FB instead.
3. Insufficient self-control + convenience in opening apps.* How to fix it
- Buy an alarm clock.
- Put my phone out of reach.
- Uninstall the FB app.
It’s important to record all the mistakes relevant to your goals no matter how small they seem. Your brain would be otherwise trained to downplay them. It’s equally important to effectively implement interventions, as measured by whether a mistake repeats itself. If a new CRA looks awfully similar to an old one, penalize yourself by skipping a fun party.
I found RCAs extremely powerful in both management and personal development, because it works against the greatest enemies inside us. Similar to retrospectives in Agile Management, it also allows continuous inspection and improvements of the management system itself.
Life Support Team: Tribes of mentors
No organization survives without external support, and neither do individuals. Although mentors can be invaluable to one’s growth, many of us aren’t lucky enough to maintain personal relations with established figures.
Fortunately, there are ways to learn from them indirectly, and our friends and colleagues can be great resources in specific areas even if they are less experienced than us overall. Their collective wisdom can be substantial because of high diversity and accessibility.
A difficulty lies in picking the right advisor for a given field. Popular wisdom says that friends tend to give poor advice. It’s not because their opinion has low quality, but because we often ask the wrong person.
The right advisor should have proven track record in the domain of the advice you’re seeking. (This is what Dalio calls “believability.”) They also need to agree to be critical instead of just making you feel good — most friends do the latter. If both criteria are met, enroll them as a mentor in your Life Support Team for that specific domain. Their quality in other fields is irrelevant as long as you don’t seek their advice in those areas.
Mentor | Domain expertise | Track record
------------+-----------------------+-------------------------------
Alex | Critical thinking | Prof. & author in this field
Kun | Entrepreneurship | Two successful exits
Mom | Early education | Well...
... | ... | ...In addition to mentors, another type of people in my Life Support Team are powerful ties in my professional network and don’t necessarily meet the mentor criteria. They can offer critical help when I’m in need. likewise, I hope I can provide key resources when they need them. Such mutual benefit comes from the fact that their skills and experience are at a similar level as mine but in different disciplines and circles of influence.
Build your Life Support Team over time. You will be amazed by the power of your social network beyond sharing Instagram pictures.
