How to Live a Worthy Life
What made Peter Drucker one of the most influential thinkers about management was his overriding interest in personal and professional development and how to lead a worthy life. He particularly endorsed—and himself exemplified—engaging in a life of multiple dimensions, inside and outside the workplace.
In an interview with him during the last year of his highly productive life, he memorably told me: “The—I wouldn’t say happy people but satisfied, contented—people I knew were more people that lived in more than one world.”
That theme inspired my first book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wsdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life, published in 2009. It also made me recognise that, in order to take full advantage of a multidimensional life, knowledge workers would need new organising principles, a framework for self-management and self-development based on Drucker’s ideas for living a diversified, holistic life.
A Framework for Self-Management and Self-Development
The result is the Total Life List. In today’s chaotic, hectic world, with seemingly never-ending time demands, it can fuel our day-to-day existence while helping us think deeply about our plans and goals.
Whether you use a traditional notebook, a computer, or a notes app on a smartphone, a Total Life List is easy to set up. You want to create a snapshot of what comprises your life as it stands now and what you envision for the future. It can be used as an ongoing document that evolves as your life progresses..
The goal is to discover and develop, through both self-reflection and action, positive qualities such as meaning, purpose, and fulfilment. The framework is structured to focus on three domains of life, each of which further identifies specific areas of activity to consider.
- People
- Immediate family
- Extended family
- Colleagues you interact with most often in the workplace
- Friends
- Professional networks
- Professional
- Places of current employment and what your work entails
- Professional affiliations and associations
- Ongoing learning activities
- Teaching
- Personal
- Volunteering
- Nonprofit organisations, or social entrepreneurship
- Mentoring
- Religious and/or spiritual activities and study; book groups, writing, art, playing music
- Sports, exercise, and other mind-body activities.
Drawing on Social Media
Creating and maintaining the list can draw on categories and content you already maintain for social media, such as LinkedIn and Facebook. But unlike contacts in those networks, the Total Life List is not necessarily something to be shared with others (though you can if that is your preference).
The entries within your categories will probably be fluid, as people move in and out of your life, professional circumstances change, and activities come and go. Within each, identify goals for the future, as appropriate. As you continue working on your list, you are likely to identify areas of life and work that you would like to explore further by participating in classes, workshops, seminars, and conferences. It can also help in identifying goals the need for future educational degrees or certifications.
The list can be as linear or nonlinear as you want. You can include drawings, doodles, mind maps, and other visual representations. Whether digital or analog, you can use different colours or other ways of making the material stand out.
Multidimensionality is a worthy if daunting, goal. Achieving and maintaining it starts with cataloguing what you are doing now, who is accompanying you on your life’s journey, and what you’d like to see happen in the future.
The new actions and changes your Total Life List inspires can eventually add you to Peter Drucker’s list of “satisfied, contented” people.