Creating a 5-Year Family Plan
Achieve More Together: How We Craft a Shared Vision for the Future
When it comes to starting-up or creating anything in life, having a vision or a plan for the future is essential for every human being. And for families, having a shared vision becomes even more crucial!
Planning, both short- and long-term, helps families stay connected, organized, remain on the same page, and provides a vital roadmap for inspiration and success — for all involved!
Planning ensures nobody will be left behind.
I got to admit, I’m some sort of planning junkie and it has served me well in life. Most of my proudest achievements in my life I couldn’t have achieved without a proper plan:
- Mastering Mandarin Chinese
- Achieving Financial independence by age 37
- Starting-up a few companies and growing them to success
Yes, I got to admit, in our family we do plan a lot.
It all started with a conversation between me and my wife back in 2006. We started planning our life as a married couple. Ever since, we kept making five year plans and amazingly achieved almost everything we set out to do.
In the meantime our family has grown and we are now the four of us!
This summer while we spent six weeks together in Taiwan and Singapore, we discussed our dreams for our kids and what kind of life wanted them to lead when they became adults.
We determined that teaching them how they can work on making their visions and dreams a reality was probably the most empowering lesson we as parents should give them on their way.
We want to raise them as strong, independent individuals who will hold the keys to their life!
This is the story of how we created a 5-year plan together as family and why it was such a success even we just started.
Why is it Essential to Have a Vision for the Future as a Family?
If you are an entrepreneur or online creator, having a shared vision and plan for the future is crucial for your loved ones to understand your goals and ambitions in order to give you the necessary space, support and time to chase your dreams.
You see, creating a family vision encourages everyone, from parents to children, to dream big and set ambitious goals.
It’s the ultimate way to showcase that “anything goes” and no dream is too big to be openly considered and talked about.
It fosters an environment where everyone is supportive and helps each other achieve their dreams while keeping a shared long-term perspective.
Having a family vision not only nurtures a positive and empowering environment but also provides valuable lessons in setting priorities and goals, creating a roadmap, and collaborating with others.
These invaluable skills will contribute to the overall growth and development of your children, for good, and for the longterm!
We will try hard to hit our ambitious visions and goals together, as a dream-team!
How we Created a 5-Year Plan with Our Children
During our 6-week summer break in Taiwan and Singapore, we decided to get real about the family version of our five year planning.
We followed a similar step-by-step process as we used for our couple-planning sessions since 2006.
This is a simple three step guide that allowed us to create a comprehensive, yet flexible, plan for our futures.
Step 1: Gather Ideas and Prepare
One evening, we gathered everyone at the dining table, and each of us was armed with around ten different-colored post-it stickers. We were free to write any dreams, goals, or visions that we had in mind for our family and were encouraged to share why they are important to us in front of everyone.
The idea was to think big, be imaginative, and consider everything and anything!
Nothing is off the table in this initial step.
As a matter of fact: Crazy is encouraged.
This is the brainstorming phase.
Step 2: Collaborate and Prioritize
Next, we had a large piece of paper on the wall where we brought all our individual stickers together and placed them in order on a timeline, categorized by priority.
This step allowed the whole family to discuss everyone’s dreams and aspirations, understand each other’s priorities and thinking process, and made sure that our plan truly catered to everyone’s interests and talents.
Some things had to happen faster than others, some are long term ideas we can incorporate in our everyday lives and others demand us to focus and work hard for longer periods of time.
The key point was all our dreams have been captured, written down and are now on a vision board of some kind sorted by timeline and priority!
Step 3: Review and Adjust
Once our 5-year plan — we called is out Family Plan 2030 — was in place, we agreed to review it every year during our family trips to Taiwan and see if we are “on track” or if some ideas and priorities have changed!
The annual review process will allow us to evaluate our progress and make any necessary adjustments over time.
We understand the importance of being flexible and adapting to changing realities, which is why reviewing our plan regularly is essential even if it’s just to reassure that our goals are still the same.
But in essence, sticking to the plan and working on executing it step by step is how it’s done.
It’s that simple.
This idea was inspired by all the many corporate planning sessions I did at my former job and once I wondered why not do something for our lives as well.
Failing to plan is planning to fail.
Planning works!
Examples of Engaging Activities we did During the Process
To engage and inspire our children, we encouraged them to think about their dream life, what they want to do in life, to draw and illustrate their dreams and goals before putting them on the post-it stickers.
This creative approach allowed them to express themselves more freely and made the activity feel more personal and enjoyable.
Besides, we also shared personal stories and experiences from our past related to goal-setting and achieving dreams.
Sharing these stories encouraged our children to think more in-depth about their aspirations and instilled a belief within them that they can achieve anything they set their minds to.
Planning your life is empowering beyond imagination!
Nothing in life comes for free, everything comes at a cost.
You can have anything — but not everything!
Life is a trade-off!
The Impact of our 5-Year Plan on Our Family
Implementing our 5-year plan has brought our family closer together and helped us stay focused on achieving our goals — all of our goals — as a team!
Understanding each other’s priorities and being supportive of individual dreams has strengthened our family bond, and also reinforces our commitment to contributing to the shared vision.
It helps knowing what your partner and kids value and aspire to in life!
It will keep everyone on track — winning at life together!
I love the team spirit it has created.
Final Thoughts
The challenge lies in allocating our time as parents to support both our children’s dreams and our own.
Life is busy, time flies.
I believe investing time sitting together and plotting how to make our aspirations a reality is a learning opportunity and has enabled us as parents to become better role models as well.
We can show our children that we are committed to achieving our goals, no matter how small or big they are.
When it comes to parenting, one of my favourite saying goes like:
Don’t tell your kids how to live their lives, live yours and let them watch!
This is what we do in our family, we walk our talk and let our kids witness this — step by step!
Your children will become who you are; so be who you want them to be!
We have done this exercise many times as a couple. Now we expand the idea to the whole family. I’m highly convinced we will make this work as well!
On a side-note, I’m very pleased how both our kids teenage years are now covered by an actual family plan they contributed to as well.
Last but not least, I do love all the goals we have all set for ourselves and the family and I can’t wait to help my kids work on their dreams as well.
It’s never too early or late to create a family vision with your loved ones.
Trust me, mapping out your future is essential!
Now it’s time to start-up your own planning,
Matt
Wait a second!
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