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Pilot Fire

Pilot Fire

Tools, Fuel, & Steering Instructions
to Make a Life You Believe In

Start Here
  • Start Here
  • Tools
  • Fuel
  • Steering Instructions
  • +
  • Roles
  • Goals
  • Plans
  • +
  • Balance
  • Passion
  • Flow
  • Yay, I Failed!
  • About
  • Contact

Plans

Generally, a plan is a group of goals or a series of steps that leads to a larger goal. Like the other parts of the Pilot Fire Simple System for Everything, great plans should help you remember what’s important, find motivation, reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed, and focus your attention so you can be present and fall into Flow.

For generating Pilot Fire, the best plans are made fairly quickly and frequently and hand written on small pieces of paper. This encourages you to keep them simple and short, involve your body in creating a physical version of your ideas, act on your plans soon, revise them often as you learn what works, and discard what doesn’t.

The one method I believe can make the longest lasting change in your life, one step at a time, is to every week

  • Plan a Great Week in 20 minutes.

Then, on as many days as you can,

  • Plan a Great Day in 2-minutes.

 

More Articles about Plans

Circadia: The Most Important Skill for Planning a Great Day

If I don’t eat a good lunch, then by late afternoon I’m going to be a prick. I’ll be impatient and curt; it’s a low blood sugar thing. If I don’t sleep well one night, I’m actually pretty good the next day, but the entire following day I’m going to be stupid. My mental energy surges around 10

read on ...

Plan to Stop Sucking and Kick Ass

My goodness, I’ve achieved balance! Yes, I write about how impossible that is, but I have arrived, and the funny thing— it’s not enough! I’m sick of being pretty darn good at a lot of things and not great at anything. My life is a mile wide and an inch deep. I want to live more

read on ...

What’s the One Thing This Week?

I’m on a kick of identifying the one thing. Key to making a great day’s plan is circling the one thing that’s the most important thing to do that day, then making sure you do it. But what about this week? What is the one most important thing to do this week? Can you pick

read on ...

Make Most Meetings Short

This article offers one suggestion: Make most meetings short. Here’s the premise to that suggestion: Most meetings are too long.  There can be delightful consequences to lingering and meandering and synchronicity and spontaneity, and making most meeting short is one way to bump up your chances of seeing some of them. Yup. As a former employee

read on ...

How to Make a Totem Pole: Part Two (Pictures and Video)

Why would two grown white men, one really old, want to make a totem pole? Before I ask that again, I must admit my last post on How to Make a Totem Pole didn’t really explain much of the nuts and bolts, so here I try to illuminate parts of the process with pictures and videos.

read on ...

Week by Week, Tweak by Tweak

I keep writing about making a Week’s Plan. It’s because I believe it’s the most important tool for reconnecting to what’s important to you, focusing your attention, and relieving feelings of being overwhelmed. It’s the practice I teach first and always return to. I design my own life every week using it. Pilot Fire wouldn’t exist

read on ...

The Pleasure and Productivity of Planned Parallel Play

Next weekend my choir, The Conspiracy of Beards, is touring New York City, singing, goofing off, and stressing out because we’ve taken time away from our day jobs. Today one of our bearded brethren called me, ready to back out of the tour. He has a lot of work on his plate and feels like

read on ...

Due Credit to Stephen Covey’s “First Things First”

I hope you don’t think I have a formula for a great life, other than this: Align what you do with what you believe is the best thing to do.† I made this website to help us quit futzing around in the confusion of choices, make some decisions, and get on with doing our best

read on ...

Betwixt & Between, Flesh Needs to Be Loved

Thresholds are places to linger. At a graduation, for a time, a student is no longer a student, and not yet a graduate. During an engagement, the question of coupling has been asked, but not yet answered. Rites of passage provide liminal experiences, at least they are meant to, and the practice of creating these

read on ...

Things You Should Don’t

Your Pilot Fire burns hottest when you focus, even if just for 5 minutes at a time. Often more important than knowing what you want to focus on is knowing what to not focus on. This is why, accompanying your Do Lists, you’ll want at least one Don’t List. Do Lists Using A Simple System for

read on ...

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Pilot Fire is the energy you put into steering your life.

More Fuel

  • Day's Plan
    Plan a Great Day in 2 Minutes
  • Week's Plan
    Plan a Great Week in 20 Minutes
  • "Do What You Love," Bullshit Advice for Financial Success
  • The Power and Problem with Yes
  • Lance Armstrong: Why I Cheated
  • Roles
    A Simple System for Everything
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