How Do You Combine the 4 Buckets with your Multi-Scale Planning?

00:00:00.000 | Hi, Kal.

00:00:06.960 | I have a follow-up question to two concepts you've been talking about.

00:00:15.400 | How does one combine the practice of four buckets, the four-bucket approach, perhaps

00:00:23.760 | maybe a bit for the beginners of the deep life practice with the strategic value-based

00:00:32.680 | planning, the multi-layered, multi-dimensional practice you've been describing you follow?

00:00:42.960 | I've been struggling with finding a place for the four buckets in the strategic weekly

00:00:54.240 | and daily planning.

00:00:57.340 | I find it somehow unnatural to combine these two, and therefore your thoughts on it would

00:01:04.360 | be appreciated.

00:01:05.360 | Well, this is a good question.

00:01:07.840 | These two things are related, but they don't accomplish the same goal.

00:01:11.300 | Let's try to isolate each of these approaches and underscore what they're meant for.

00:01:18.120 | So we're talking about the multi-scale planning, the values-based multi-scale planning.

00:01:23.800 | For those who are unaware, this is the idea where you have a list of your values.

00:01:29.840 | You use those values to help create a strategic plan for the current semester or quarter,

00:01:35.200 | depending on how you like to divide up time.

00:01:38.240 | You then use that strategic plan or semester plan or quarter plan to influence your weekly

00:01:43.560 | plan each week.

00:01:44.560 | Let me look at that when I create my weekly plan.

00:01:46.160 | What do I need to do this week to make progress on that bigger picture plan?

00:01:50.280 | And then your weekly plan informs your daily time block plan.

00:01:53.480 | That's value-based multi-scale planning.

00:01:56.640 | For me, that is the crux of how I actually intentionally deploy my time.

00:02:00.680 | It's what makes sure that all the different things that are important to me and my career

00:02:05.080 | are getting attention and that we move from the values at the highest level down to what

00:02:11.120 | am I doing right now on the lowest level.

00:02:14.840 | All right, now let's look at the bucket-based system.

00:02:17.200 | The bucket-based system is an exercise that helps try to move your life closer to the

00:02:22.560 | ideal of the deep life.

00:02:25.200 | The idea here, for those who don't remember from when we talked about this a lot earlier

00:02:28.920 | in the podcast, is that you define what we call a bucket for each of the important areas

00:02:35.320 | of a life well-lived.

00:02:36.320 | So you might have craft, which covers your work, or other types of creative endeavor.

00:02:42.560 | You have community, your connection to family, friends, and those around you.

00:02:46.920 | You might have constitution.

00:02:48.920 | In the classic four-bucket list, you'd have constitution, which is your health, and then

00:02:53.000 | you would have contemplation, which covers things like ethics, philosophy, and theology.

00:02:58.000 | Those were the classic four.

00:02:59.200 | There's other ones we've talked about as well.

00:03:00.600 | You can break them up as you want.

00:03:01.920 | You don't have to make them alliterative either.

00:03:03.560 | I just like to do that.

00:03:05.500 | So in the bucket method, you have these buckets for the areas of your life that are important.

00:03:10.320 | Step one, you establish a keystone habit for each of these buckets, something you do every

00:03:15.280 | day and track, something that's not trivial, but also something that's not impossible,

00:03:20.480 | as a way of signaling to yourself that you take each of these areas of your life seriously

00:03:24.600 | and you're willing to do non-urgent, non-forced, non-trivial activity towards the advancement

00:03:32.720 | of each of these different parts of your life.

00:03:34.040 | They're all important.

00:03:35.200 | The next step of the bucket-based method is to then dedicate four to six weeks to each

00:03:39.200 | of these buckets to really thinking about that part of your life and big picture changes

00:03:43.320 | you want to make, overhauling that part of your life.

00:03:46.960 | So when you have those four to six weeks on constitution, you're really rethinking your

00:03:50.600 | health and your fitness and how that's organized in your life, et cetera.

00:03:55.760 | So I see the bucket-based system as, it's almost like a one-time project-based exploration

00:04:04.880 | overhaul of your life.

00:04:07.400 | You want to make sure that you're updating your various rules and habits and systems

00:04:12.680 | that you run your life with to be better in tune with what is important to you, that your

00:04:16.160 | life is aimed closer towards that that is deep.

00:04:21.320 | It's not unlike saying, "Okay, what I'm going to do is hire someone to come and overhaul

00:04:27.120 | my closet and get my clothing up to speed.

00:04:29.400 | I don't like the way I'm dressing."

00:04:31.000 | You know, it's like a one-time thing you're doing because you want to dress better.

00:04:33.720 | The bucket-based system is, "I'm going through this thing.

00:04:35.760 | It's going to take me maybe five or six months.

00:04:38.400 | I'm going to come out of it on the other end with my life better aligned with what's important

00:04:42.040 | to me."

00:04:43.040 | So think of it that way.

00:04:44.040 | It's an exercise in intentional life overhauling.

00:04:49.280 | Value-based multi-scale planning is how you live your life.

00:04:51.280 | That's actually how you organize and structure your life into perpetuity.

00:04:54.440 | That is the structure of how your life goes.

00:04:56.160 | You have the plan for the semester, which influences the weekly plan, which influences

00:04:59.280 | the daily time block plan.

00:05:00.280 | It's how your system, your regularly applied system for actually making sense of your time.

00:05:05.520 | That's just the backdrop of how I actually make sense of what I should be doing next.

00:05:10.760 | And the bucket system is this one-time improvement or overhaul or optimization of your life.

00:05:15.080 | Now where do these things actually formally intersect?

00:05:17.800 | Well, if you're going through this exercise of keystone habits followed by one-by-one

00:05:24.060 | overhauling your buckets, that's going to show up in your semester or quarterly plan.

00:05:30.280 | That's where those worlds actually intersect.

00:05:31.800 | "Hey, one of the things I'm doing this semester is I am now in the middle of the overhaul

00:05:38.520 | of the craft bucket.

00:05:40.440 | And here's my thoughts on that."

00:05:41.560 | So you see that when you look at your semester plan each week.

00:05:44.500 | And so each week you're actually making sure there's time put aside to make progress on

00:05:48.240 | that.

00:05:49.240 | And when you get to each day, when it's relevant, you actually have the time blocked off in

00:05:52.100 | that day to make progress of it.

00:05:53.160 | So that's where they formally intersect.

00:05:55.000 | It's going to show up on your strategic semester quarterly plan.

00:05:58.680 | So that'll percolate down to your actual action.

00:06:00.780 | But the character of these two things is different.

00:06:03.040 | I'll say it one more time.

00:06:04.960 | The multi-scale planning is a persistent system for making sense and organizing your available

00:06:09.720 | time.

00:06:10.900 | The bucket system is more of a one-time overhaul to align your life better with your values

00:06:14.960 | to make your life deeper than it was before you started the exercise.

00:06:18.920 | All right, so that's a good question.

00:06:21.080 | All right, let's move on to another call now.

00:06:22.880 | This one has to do with notes and meeting preparation.

00:06:26.680 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

How Do You Combine the 4 Buckets with your Multi-Scale Planning?

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