Have you ever stopped and thought “wait, wtf am I actually doing with my life?”
I have, and I’ll show you how I tackle the problem.
There are a couple of ways you can approach life:
You can go with the flow and see what happens, hope that you can “manifest your reality” through some pseudoscience
You can map out the path your want your life to take and use a systematic approach to reach your goals.
Today I’m going to speak about the rather creatively named “Triangle” which focuses on the second approach. This isn’t particularly complex or any kind of new innovation; it’s just simple planning and structure.
Note, that the Triangle can easily be applied to a business in isolation in addition to your own personal life.
Introducing The Triangle
The origins of the Triangle are unknown to me - I was browsing a random subreddit many years ago and someone posted a pic of the Triangle without any comments.
I looked at it and thought “huh - this is actually a great visualisation” so I downloaded the pic and decided to ponder further.
Here is a picture of the glorious Triangle:
There are generally two main types of thinkers:
Big Picture Thinkers - visionaries who are creative and strategic. An entrepreneur/visionary would be a good example
Detailed Thinkers - systematic, process-oriented and organised. A CFO or COO might fall under this bracket.
The benefit of the Triangle is that it accounts for both types of thinking - you focus on the big picture first and then work down and design a detailed plan to achieve your goals.
This provides both clarity and a systematic approach you can use to map out your future.
Start From The Top
The Triangle is best used as an overarching roadmap for your life, however, it is possible to apply it independently to different areas such as work, business, health etc.
Let’s work down the Triangle starting at the top and explain the different sections and how to apply them.
20+ Year Mission (Blue)
This is your moonshot. If you’re not familiar with the term moonshot, it can best be described as:
“An ambitious, exploratory and ground-breaking idea or project undertaken without any expectation of near-term profitability or benefit”
The issue that many of us (including myself) face, is that we get caught up in the day-to-day routine of life and don’t take a step back and look at the big picture, and really challenge ourselves as to what we could be capable of accomplishing.
Some “big picture” examples of a 20+ year mission could be:
Become a billionaire
Solve climate change
Colonise Mars
Extend human lifespan
Provide clean water and sanitation to humanity
End world hunger
Reading the above list, you may think these are crazy goals, however, if you don’t set crazy goals, then you will have a close to 0% chance of accomplishing them (unless you get there through pure luck).
If you set a moonshot and have a framework to work towards accomplishing it, your chances will improve (even if only by a small margin) and you will be further towards your moonshot than you were before doing this exercise.
Your moonshot should link to your raison d'être (the purpose of your existence).
What are you passionate about and what matters to you?
https://80000hours.org/ is an awesome website which highlights some of the key problems in the world.
If you’re passionate about solving world peace, then building an international weapons company probably shouldn’t be one of your moonshots.
Throughout the rest of this article, we’ll use the example of becoming a billionaire as our 20+ year moonshot.
10/5/3 Year Mission (Green)
Now that we’ve set our billionaire moonshot, we want to focus on the high-level goals/milestones that will be required to achieve this.
You don’t have to go into too much detail on these since these goals are far in the future, and you will need to constantly iterate and review your plans on an ongoing basis.
An example of working through the Triangle at this stage may look like this:
20 + Year Mission (moonshot)
Become a billionaire
10 Year Vision
Started 2nd/3rd company and focus on emerging fields like agritech , biotech , cleantech etc.
Become a venture capitalist/capital allocator - invest in other companies to grow my wealth
Have a very strong network of high-net-worth individuals and investors
Deal flow for potential investments and funding for future businesses I decide to launch
5 Year Vision
Achieve complete financial security so I never have to work again
Money = freedom to achieve my goals
Have a diversified investment portfolio primarily focused on cash preservation.
Allocate 1-5% of portfolio focused on “moonshot” bets in other companies
Have built a multi-million £ company and secured an exit
Be a recognised “thought leader”
Strong media & social presence to attract other like-minded individuals to me
3 Year Vision
Own a business which is making at least £5 million per year in sales with a 33% net profit margin. Look at potential acquisitions/mergers
Operate at a high level of personal efficiency. Optimise health, productivity, knowledge & learning
12/3/1 Month Goals (Yellow)
Next, we move to the not-too-distant future and focus on Annual, Quarterly and Monthly goals:
We break down our 3-year vision further, so let’s work down the tree using the previous example:
3 Year Vision
Own a business which is making at least £5 million per year in sales with a 33% net profit margin. Look at potential acquisitions/mergers
Operate at a high level of personal efficiency. Optimise health, productivity, knowledge & learning
The idea would be to incorporate both key points (business & personal efficiency) into this section; however, let’s just focus on the business aspect for brevity.
🎯 Year 1 - £100k Revenue
📆 Annual
Launch a company which becomes default alive (it has enough cash flow to sustain itself) by achieving £100k recurring revenue by Q4 end.
🕒 Quarter 1
Start business and plan go-to-market strategy
🈷️ Month 1
Complete business plan & financial model
🈷️ Month 2
Incorporate company
Start website build and write content
Set up social media channels etc
🈷️ Month 3
Launch website
Start ad spend (Google Ads etc.)
Start cold outreach to prospective clients
Increase personal & business social media presence
🕒 Quarter 2
Get first 10 clients to generate £25k in recurring revenue
Test marketing channels and customer acquisition strategy
🈷️ Month 1
Acquire 3 clients
Continue cold outreach
🈷️ Month 2
Win 3 new clients
Refine paid ads strategy
🈷️ Month 3
Win 4 new clients
Refine social media strategy
🕒 Quarter 3
Get next 15 clients to generate £37.5k additional recurring revenue
Refine marketing strategy & systems
🈷️ Month 1
Win 4 new clients
Increase paid ads spend
🈷️ Month 2
Win 5 new clients
Increase social media activity
🈷️ Month 3
Win 6 new clients
Outsource social media & ad management to free up time
🕒 Quarter 4
Hire first staff member
Get another 15 clients and to generate £37.5k additional recurring revenue
Focus on systems & onboarding (don’t want to grow too quickly here, build to scale)
🈷️ Month 1
Win 5 new clients
Process map service delivery model & revise task management systems
Hire & onboard staff member, set up payroll etc.
🈷️ Month 2
Win 5 new clients
Update internal processes and knowledge base
Pass over X% of existing client work to staff member to free up time
🈷️ Month 3
Win 5 new clients
Focus on automation throughout the business
You get the idea, so I’ll do a shorter version for Years 2 & 3 which just focuses on quarters:
🎯 Year 2 - £1mm Revenue
📆 Annual
Achieve £1mm revenue by expanding operations and seeking investor funding
🕒 Quarter 1
Update the Triangle again
Prepare investment deck, update financial model etc.
Close £Xmm of funding
🕒 Quarter 2
Allocate £X to marketing spend
Hire X more staff members (admin, sales, client support)
🕒 Quarter 3
Hire X more staff members
Increase marketing spend by £X
Forge new strategic partnerships
🕒 Quarter 4
Hire X more staff members
Further increase marketing spend by £X
Build additional revenue streams into the business model
🎯 Year 3 - £5mm Revenue
📆 Annual
Seek next 2 rounds of investment capital for £Xmm amount, aggressively scale out sales, operations and additional revenue stream
As I said, I think you get the idea by now, so I won’t go further with Year 3 😉
Weekly & Daily Goals (Pink)
This is where we get to the nitty gritty - the “boots on the ground” work.
How can we make sure we’re pushing the needle every day so we’re making small steps toward our ultimate goals:
The Weekly section covers your key targets for the week, while the daily section (as you may expect) covers what you need to do each day.
These would link directly to your monthly goals which were detailed in the previous section. An example:
🈷️ Month 1
Acquire first 3 clients and continue cold outreach
📒 Weekly goals
Add 70 target clients to outreach list
Send 50 cold e-mails to prospective clients
Write 2 blog posts
Send 20 LinkedIn messages
📒 Daily To-Dos
Add 10 clients to outreach list (1hr)
Send 7 personalised cold e-mails (2hr)
Work on blog post (45mins)
Send 3 personalised LinkedIn messages (45mins)
Etc.
I’ve written a blog here about how I manage these areas in relation to my own life. An extract:
My day is generally built around filling the time blocks that recurring tasks don't take up.
So, for example, in Recurring tasks, I've got things like:
Morning protein shake & start work every weekday 0645
Walk every weekday 1045-1115
Workout every Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri 1445-1615
Cooking & cleaning every day at 1715-1830
This gives me the following free time blocks:
0645-1045 - I try to allocate "deep work" or accounting/finance technical tasks in this block as I prefer to get them out of the way first.
1115-1445 - Free block to clear WIP. I'll work on anything that's required here
1615-1715 - Admin block. Dealing with any admin or replying to e-mails
1830+ - I'll spend around 45mins in the evening updating ToDoist, Roam Research and plan the next day out hour-by-hour
Implementation
🎯 20+ Year Mission
Figuring out your 20+ year mission is the hardest part of this exercise - once you’ve done that, you can work down the Triangle and populate the rest of the Triangle by conducting data and gathering more research.
Some prompts to help you with your 20+ year mission:
What am I passionate about?
What matters to me?
What worries me about the world?
What would I do if I could not fail?
How do I choose to measure success/failure?
What am I avoiding, or running from?
What makes me unique?
What excites me?
This is the most important part of the Triangle - don’t rush it.
Establishing your 20+ year mission may involve a lot of soul searching and take you 1 month, or it may take you 1 day.
🎯 10/5/3 Year Vision
Establishing this section will likely require a bit of research before you can complete it.
Some questions to ask yourself:
What historical figures have done similar? What path did they take?
What positive and negative global factors could arise in the following areas over the next 10 years, and how can I leverage them?
The PESTLE framework is a good standing point for this:
Political - global events
Economic - access to capital, rise of decentralised finance
Social - societal trends and shifting attitudes
Technological - new technology
Legal - regulation, taxes
Environmental - climate change
Anything can happen in life over the next 10 years and factors outside of your control can put your plan into disarray, so plan as best as you can, but don’t overanalyse too much.
🎯 Annual/Quarterly/Monthly
This will require a lot of work as you map out your key objectives for the year, I would recommend you take a systems thinking approach to this area.
You definitely want to spend a lot of time and analysis on this area, and it will likely take up the bulk of your time when completing this exercise
🎯 Weekly/Daily
Read my blog and use recurring tasks to manage this:
Final Thoughts
My last post was titled “Consistent Execution” but this is the first post I’ve done in around 6 months, so I need to follow my own advice and be more consistent 😄
I’ll aim to get another post out around the end of September, but hope you enjoyed this one.
Adios!