YOUR NEXT CHAPTER, BUILT IN ADVANCE
Prototyping Three Different Futures
3-Minute Read
Pick one future and you’re guessing. Sketch three and you’re choosing.
Your current path can feel like the only draft you get: the job, the company, the direction, fixed until something breaks. For Momofuku Ando, something did. At forty-seven, a credit union collapse under his leadership wiped out nearly everything he owned.
He started over anyway, in a backyard shed, in an industry he knew nothing about. After a year of getting four hours of sleep a night, he invented the world’s first instant ramen. Chicken Ramen came out of that shed. Cup Noodles followed thirteen years after.
Momofuku scrambled to create his second draft after the first one collapsed. You can create yours before that happens.
There’s a simple exercise for exactly this, built to help you sketch several different versions of your future side by side, assess them, and see which one actually has life in it before you commit years to finding out the hard way.
This week’s issue of The Grip shows you how to build it.
testing a new future before it forces your hand
Inside Stanford’s Odyssey Plan
In Stanford’s Designing Your Life course, Dave Evans and Bill Burnett teach a tool called the Odyssey Plan. It asks you to build three different five-year versions of your life, each one a prototype you can actually test.
I’m laying it out for you here because it does exactly what we do at The Plenteous Life: it treats your future as something you build, not something you find.
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Why Testing Multiple Futures Beats Searching For “The One Right Path”
There’s no single right path waiting to be discovered; there’s only the path you make workable through the action you take after you choose it.
Map out several versions of your future and you see that no one decision is carrying your entire life. You can pivot. You can test a direction, learn what it costs and what it gives, and change course without treating the change as failure.
And you may see a new possibility for your life that changes your decisions today.
Run this for your marriage, your business, your team, your community too, not just your personal development.
“There’s no single right path waiting to be discovered.”
How To Build Your Odyssey Plan: 3 Five-Year Paths
Grab paper, or download The Odyssey Plan Worksheet Evans and Burnett built for this. Then sketch three genuinely different five-year futures, not three versions of the same one.
For each plan, consider the moments and experiences you’d like to have throughout. Even draw these moments in pictures to activate your creativity:
The Expected Path—stay the course. This is how your life turns out when you continue as you’re currently living. Same job, routine, direction. Where does the trajectory of the path you’re on now take you?
The Alternative Path—a different life. If your current plan ceased to be an option, what other direction would you take? New profession, location, or lifestyle? What life does that version of you build?
The Wildcard Path—dream scenario. If money and other peoples’ opinions weren’t a concern, what would you do? If nothing was stopping you, what life would you create?
For each plan, rate yourself 0-10 on four metrics:
Resources: Do you have, or are you willing to build, the time, money, skills, and network this requires? A high score means you can start now. A low score tells you what you’ll need to acquire.
Likability: How alive do you feel about this future? A high score means it’s genuinely yours, not just logical. A low score is how you spot a plan that looks good on paper and drains you anyway.
Confidence: Do you see yourself capable of making this happen? A high score means you trust yourself to handle what this path throws at you. A low score tells you where to start running small experiments to build that trust.
Coherence: Does this fit your values and worldview? A high score means your actions and your beliefs are moving the same direction. A low score is your integrity check: it feels off because somewhere, they’re pulling apart.
If none of your three plans score well, that’s fine; that’s the process working. Prototype another one. If you don’t like the bed you’ve made, make it again.
Once a plan does excite you, don’t lock it in just yet: test it, gather what you learn, and keep iterating. The point is to experience that your life is not only flexible, it’s a product of what you commit to creating.
Prototyping doesn’t wait for certainty; it creates it. Draft three versions of your life, score them, and test the ones that inspire you to action.
Notice how you experience decisions and actions today when you see yourself as capable of generating more of what you want. By prototyping your future, you can expand what’s possible and intentionally choose paths that make you come alive.
Keep creating.
key takeaways
You don’t need a collapse to find your next direction. A simple sketching exercise lets you test several futures before you’re forced to choose one.
A plan that looks good on paper can still be the wrong one. Testing your future against honest criteria reveals which path actually has life in it.
Certainty isn’t a prerequisite for building your next chapter. Prototyping creates the clarity that waiting never will.
WORK 1:1 WITH BECKY
As a self-mastery coach, I help mission-driven founders accelerate desired results without sacrificing what matters. If that sounds like good news, REACH OUT to experience how 1:1 coaching can empower you to be the masterful leader your mission requires.
May you prosper in every way!
Becky & TPL Team
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