Your Ten-Year Plan

An exercise to dream big, and achieve those dreams!

In an episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, Tim Ferriss interviewed Debbie Millman who described an exercise she calls “Your Ten-Year Plan for a Remarkable Life”.

This is an affirmation exercise that she did when being a student of Milton Glaser in which you write a detailed description details what your life would like 10 years from now, then you read this essay every year. From her own experience (and the one of her students), the predictions are uncanny in the way that they realise themselves.

This motivated me so much that I created this small page to make this exercise more visible. You can find a transcript of the exercise, or the short audio version of Debbie Millman describing it.

So now that you are eager to write your own plan, grab a pen, a paper, and jump into the conversation between Tim Ferriss and Debbi Millman to start achieving your big dreams (6:26). This will give you all the details, and how to best profit from this.

As a reference, you can find the part where she describes the question you need to ask yourself here (1:56), and a transcribed version just here:

So let say it is Winter 2027. What does your life look like? What are you doing? Where are you living? Who are you living with? Do you have pets? What kind of house are you in? Is it an apartment are you in the city are you in the country? What does your furniture look like? What is your bed like? What are your sheets like? What kind of clothes do you wear? What kind of hair do you have? Tell me about your pets, tell me about your significant other, do you have children? Do you have a car? Do you have a boat? Talk about your career. What do you want? What are you reading? What are you making? What excites you? What is your health like? And write this day, this one day ten years from now. So one day in the winter of 2027, what does your whole day look like? Start from the minute you wake up, brush your teeth, have your coffee or tea, all the way through until minute you tuck yourself in at night. What is that day like for you? Dream big, dreams without any fear. Write it all down. You don’t have to share it with anyone other than yourself. Put your whole heart into it. And write like there is no tomorrow; write like your life depends on it because it does. And then read it, once a year, and see what happens. It’s magic.

That’s it, I hope it helps you !

You can ping me on Twitter, or contact me by email. I am not the original author of this content, just a mere messenger.