Odyssey Plans

The three-alternate-lives exercise from Designing Your Life, laid out as parallel tracks you can compare at a glance. Plan A is the life you're already living, played five years forward. Plan B is what you'd build if that path suddenly vanished. Plan C is the wildcard — what you'd try if money or image didn't matter. Each track gets a name, a milestone rail for years one through five, the question that plan has to answer, and a four-gauge dashboard: resources, likability, confidence, coherence. The point isn't picking the right life — it's discovering that you have several worth taking seriously, and seeing what the comparison teaches you. Fill in all three, or print it blank and sketch by hand.

Best for: Anyone at a crossroads — sketching three genuinely different five-year futures side by side instead of agonizing over one.
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A still life that evokes the Odyssey Plans

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You have more than one life worth living.

The Odyssey Plans exercise from Designing Your Life: sketch three genuinely different five-year versions of your life in parallel. Plan A is the life you're on, played forward. Plan B is what you'd build if that path vanished tomorrow. Plan C is the wildcard — what you'd try if money or image didn't matter. All three have to be lives you'd actually live.

How it works

Give each plan a name, a milestone for each of the five years (one per line), and the question that plan has to answer.

Then rate each plan 0–5 on four gauges — resources, likability, confidence, coherence — as four numbers like 4 3 4 3. Leave anything blank to fill in by hand.

Not sure where to start?