My Big Five for Life

Life- and career-decisions are significant. But do they have to be difficult? If I don’t know the goal – then how should I know, which way is the more promising one? The Big Five for Life represent my five life goals. However, I don’t want to be dogmatic. My motto here is, similar to safaris, that it’s really good to achieve three out of five. If you can make four out of five, that’s great. Achieving five out of five is metaphorically the holy grail. Knowing the goal and always having it in mind always makes my decisions easier.

Of course I didn’t come up with all of this myself. Quite the opposite. It’s from The Big Five for Life – Strelecky, John P. (no. 10 on my agile reading list).

Strelecky does not only prompt you to define your own Big Five for Life, but also to ponder your Purpose for Existing. So without further delay here my

Purpose for Existing:

To have fun at what I do best: Helping people have fun at what they do best.

My Big Five for Life — I’m AWARE:

A – Become an Agile Project Management Consultant
W – Travel the World
A – Be directing or Acting in an at least medium sized theater
R – Have intense family and friend Relationships
E
– Active political or charitable Engagement

I only started to define my Big Five for Life when I was 32. Of course there had always been preferences, wishes, dreams. Nothing very concrete. The process of defining concrete goals creates exactly that kind of focus one needs in order to make difficult life- or career-decisions clearly and without regrets.

One example: I am self employed / freelancing by now, but still do receive lots of job offers for full time employments. For a long time I thought about some of them intensively, which cost time and focus. By now my approach is much more straight forward. The first question is:

Does this full time employment help me achieve another goal of my Big Five? No? Then it’s a clear rejection from me. Yes? Then let’s talk.

Even more concrete? A full time employment (in the area of Agile Project Management) would have to allow me

  • to travel for work (kind of a no-go, because it contradicts my family goal)
  • to progress my acting and directing (unlikely, because there’s not much agile project management in this field)
  • to drive political or charitable engagement (the most likely overlap that could happen)

The last scenario actually came together, when in 2019 I received two good offers as freelance Agile Coach, which I had put on hold (and communicated proactively) in favor of a full time employment with a political organization. In the end we did not reach an agreement, while the two other offers had expired. Was it worth it? I regret none of this. With clear goals in mind, the decision was easy.


If you have any feedback or inspiration or — the best — can help me fulfill any of my Big Five, please contact me or leave a comment! 🙂

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