The 1/5/10 Strategy: How To Hack Your Best Future

Hi. I’ve included yet another article/video by MJ DeMarco because I believe in his philosophy and that it works because I’m implementing it myself.

Goal Setting ……. Backwards!

The 1-5-10 Strategy by MJ DeMarco : How to engineer your dream life

What if I could tell you that in a few years from now your life could be ten thousand percent better, like from dead broke and struggling in a one-bedroom apartment to a multi-millionaire who has everything, including free time?

The fact is, most people fail to succeed because they fail to plan their life.

If you want to radically change your life, you have to make a plan. You have to give your life a road map or a GPS system.

For my entire life, I’ve been using what I call the 1-5-10 strategy and let me tell you it works beautifully and it is responsible for the awesome life I lead today; and yes, I still use this to this day.

10 Year Plan

Get a journal or several pieces of paper (do not use a digital device) and then on one page write ‘ten years’ and then envision how your life would look in ten years from now if everything went as well as it could. Envision it as a best-case scenario

where would you live?
what would you drive?
what would you be doing?
what’s your net worth?
where would you vacation?
what would your daily day look like?

Write everything down and be specific. Clip photos if you need to so for example, it’s saying ten years, you see yourself

with a twenty million dollar net worth, because you just sold your company for fifteen million dollars.
You live somewhere sunny in a house on the ocean.
You have an awesome spouse.You are perfectly debt-free.
You are doing what you want to do without constraints of money.

Now at this point, your ten-year vision might seem a bit like a fantasy, but trust me it isn’t.

5 Year Plan

Now get another piece of paper or turn the page and write ‘five years’

Underneath that, write what your life would need to look like to be halfway to your ten-year vision, so if you just sold your company for fifteen million dollars in year ten, at year five you’ probably have

A business that is doing several million dollars in revenue and several hundred thousand dollars in profit
Maybe you have a million dollars saved
The spouse front – maybe you’ve been in a relationship with somebody awesome for several years

Write down your halfway point and what it should look like, then turn the page or get another piece of paper and write ‘one year’

What would your life need to look like one year from now to be 20, maybe 25 percent closer to that 5-year vision?

1 Year Plan

Well, if you have a business that does several million dollars in revenue at year five, then it year one maybe you:

Just have a business that is profitable
You have the foundation laid for scale
With an awesome productocracy
Maybe you’ve paid off your first credit card
Maybe you’ve been on 20 dates in pursuit of your soulmate
Maybe you’ve become proficient in some computer language and built yourself a high leverage skill

Write it all down. One year from today, what it should look like.

Congratulations – You’ve just created your 1-5-10 Plan.

You now have a roadmap for your life, but more importantly you now created a decision framework for action. From this point on, after you create your 1-5-10 strategy, you now have a framework that tells you the right decisions to make and not make.

You know exactly what choices you should and should not be making. If any decision advances you toward the one-year vision, it’s the right decision because it moves you toward the five and the ten.

Any decision or action that does not move you closer to the one-year vision, well then it’s an action fake, a detour from your dream life.

Of course I’m not suggesting you can’t go to the movies or to a baseball game, but in general the 1-5-10 plan acts like a decision compass for moving the needle on your life.

I found my old 1-5-10 Plan

This is the strategy I’ve been using to map up my life. Interestingly, because I recently moved across town and was stuck digging out of a cluttered garage, I recently found my 1-5-10 strategy from years ago when I was in my early 20s.

After I dug it out of the dusty box, I was amazed at what I read. Everything I wrote in there came true (well not everything, but everything that remained important to me).

Financial freedom – check
Lamborghinis – check
Sunny climate – check
Freedom to write without financial limitation – check

and a whole lot more.

I also wrote down ‘courtside seats to the Bulls game’ which of course I don’t care about any longer, so that disappeared.

As you change, so will your five and ten year visions, so if you want to learn more about the 1-5-10 strategy it is outlined in my new book scheduled for release in 2020.

The Bottom line

If you want to succeed and give your life a huge quantum leap, you have to plan to succeed. A big part of the process is creating a decision framework that highlights the daily actions you need to take to make it happen and that only happens consistently when you give yourself the framework that keeps you on track and on pace toward that one year vision, which of course advances you to the five and ten year vision.

Myself, I write the 1-5-10 plan on paper and then I encase it in plastic liner.

Write your 1-5-10 strategy out and frame it on the wall. Keep it front and center and you keep the decision framework active and then watch your life shift.

1 year from now you’ll be astounded at the changes in your life.