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Life planning: why the grass is always greener in the other universe.
Picture yourself in an identical world, a replica of the one where you're reading this sentence.
You had the same rough night's sleep thinking the same anxious thoughts. You took the same journey to work and quietly gagged at the same colleague's yoghurt breath as he bored you with the same photos of his three-year-old's finger paintings.
The only difference in that universe is that, instead of clicking on this article, you decided to spend ten minutes on TikTok. And in doing so you set off a butterfly effect, a chain of events that, a hundred years from now, leads to the collapse of civilisation. Bet you're glad you're still reading.
An infinite number of identical clones
There's a growing consensus among physicists that we live in a multiverse. In most of those universes you'll never exist. In others you'll have blue skin and live in a mushroom house. And in at least one, an exact copy of this one, your careless choice of TikTok over this article is about to doom humanity.
The easiest version of the argument goes like this: if space is infinitely vast, it's impossible for there not to be an infinite number of other universes that look exactly like ours, down to the smallest detail. Another theory holds that every time you make a decision, scratch your head, check your phone, you split into multiple copies, each representing a different choice you could have made. You don't notice because you're in the middle of it. But from a bird's-eye view you'd see a frothy mass of universes expanding from this precise moment, rather like pouring a glass of soda.
What this has to do with life planning
We often get hung up on finding our 'one true purpose' when making life choices. It sounds lovely on a Pinterest quote, but it's a rubbish concept, because it sends people hunting for the right path instead of exploring the many good enough ones.
If you accept the multiverse idea, then there's a world where, aged 18, you became an artist instead of taking the route that pleased your parents. In another you found the courage to talk to that stranger on the bus and ended up happily married. The point: just as you have infinite alternative pasts, you also have many possible futures, and in plenty of them you're living a rich, flourishing life because of choices you're still about to make. Research suggests most people can imagine at least seven or eight alternative happy lives. So let's use that spectrum as inspiration for making your current life a little better.
Thought experiment: a spectrum of optimal lives
Here's an exercise I borrowed from Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. Invent three 'good enough' alternative universes and design a life plan for each.
Plan 1: that thing you do, but better
This first plan is built on what you've already got going on. It's your current life expanded forward, perhaps with a few additions that would make it ten per cent better.
Plan 2: that thing you'd do if plan 1 were suddenly gone
Assume plan 1 is no longer an option. You still have to make a living, so what else would you do? This might be a current side project or an entirely new direction.
Plan 3: the life you'd live if money or image were no issue
What would you do if you could make a decent living from it and nobody would think any less of you for it? What if, instead of making money, life became about making meaning?
Bringing it back to earth
For each of the three plans, sketch out a five-year picture: a rough timeline including personal milestones (a move, learning a skill, a relationship), a one-line headline capturing the essence of that life, and a quick self-score out of ten on four things. Resources: do you have the time, money, skills and contacts to pull it off? Likeability: are you hot, cold or lukewarm about it? Coherence: does it fit your values? Confidence: how sure are you that you could make it happen?
The purpose is to let yourself go a little wild. Most people, having done the exercise, end up making a few deliberate tweaks to their existing life rather than blowing it all up. But you won't know which good-enough universe appeals until you've actually imagined a few of them.
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