# Life design (2021 edition) A while ago, I’ve realized that I now care much more about life design than I did in the past. That wasn’t even a thing for me in the past. When I was 20-30, I cared most about my family, learning, and working on interesting projects. I also focused on enjoying my free time as much as I could. I was satisfied with the constraints of my life. I accepted those without ever questioning those, and didn’t even notice that a big part of my life revolved around work and was impacted by it. The schedule I was imposed, where I had to go to work, the commute every day, what projects I could work on, when I could take vacation, who I got to work with, how I had to organize my projects and my work, etc. There were countless imposed constraints. Now I pay much more attention to the landscape of my life, and I want to carefully design my life. I don’t want long commutes anymore. I don’t want to have a boss anymore. I want more responsibility, more control, and more freedom. I’m not interested in the 9 to 5 at all. I prefer to organize my schedule. That’s a very different perspective, and it has a huge impact on my future plans. For instance, my position as an employee is definitely a great safety net, but it’s not part of my long-term plans. It’s actually a constraint that I want to remove in my life and a big reason why I’m building alternative sources of income. It’s also clear to me that consulting is not a long-term goal either. It’s just a short-term necessity. Freelancing does give me much more freedom, but depending on the clients I still get imposed so many constraints that I’m not interested in. This highlights a clear fact: **plans for the future need to be reviewed regularly because we* *change all the time**. By [[Looking back (2021 edition)|Looking back]], I’ve identified my wins, my mistakes, my failures, and my learnings. But also what I want and don’t want anymore. Today I’m an author, blogger, entrepreneur, bootstrapper, full-stack developer, team leader, project manager, solution architect, DevSecOps specialist, coach, mentor, and freelancer. I only mention this to make a point: I have choices. There are an infinite number of possible futures. And that’s fun! But it’s a double-edged sword. Having a choice is good, but sitting in front of too many possibilities may result in analysis paralysis (and we don’t want that). Whatever I choose means letting go of other things. Ultimately, it’s about sensing what *feels *most aspirational, and what will definitely push me to grow. To clarify my thoughts, I’ve written down my current ideas, challenges, and motivations: ![[DeveloPassion's Newsletter 356 - Looking left and right - Looking ahead.png]] Caption: My ideas, challenges & motivations [Miro](https://miro.com) is a great tool for that kind of brainstorming session. Thanks to that first step, I’ve identified a few quick wins and major projects I want to focus on in the coming years. Reflecting some more, this led to the following plan: ![[DeveloPassion's Newsletter 356 - Looking left and right - Plan for 2022.png]] In the coming months, I plan to get back to writing Dev Concepts, write more blog articles. I also intend to build another startup and continue exploring with small and riskless bets. Aside from that, I’ll continue exploring design, and read more. Next year, I’ll also get started with YouTube. I’ve been reluctant to speak for a while, so that is probably where I need to go next. I think that I’ll start by introducing software development concepts, one at a time. I’ve also made plans for +3 and +10 years, to give me a sense of where I (i.e., who I am today) want to head towards. So these are my current plans for the future. It’s a work in progress; a draft. It’s unstable, incomplete. And it’ll always remain so, and that’s wonderful! Our whole life is just a draft, that we get to rewrite day after day. ## Related - [[Life Design]]