Draft three Odyssey Plans
Sketch three different five-year lives — not variations on one, but genuinely divergent paths.
Key takeaways
- What it is: Sketch three different five-year lives — not variations on one, but genuinely divergent paths.
- Why it works: Holding a single plan makes you defend it; holding three forces divergent thinking and breaks the trap of optimizing one option you haven’t questioned. Plan one is your current path continued; plan two is what you’d do if that vanished; plan three is what you’d do if money and image were no object. Each exposes desires and constraints the others hide.
- Evidence: Plausible mechanism, limited direct outcome data.
- Avoid: Writing three near-identical plans (same job, slightly different title), which defeats the divergence the exercise exists to create.
Why it works
Holding a single plan makes you defend it; holding three forces divergent thinking and breaks the trap of optimizing one option you haven’t questioned. Plan one is your current path continued; plan two is what you’d do if that vanished; plan three is what you’d do if money and image were no object. Each exposes desires and constraints the others hide.
How to do it
- 1Draft Plan A: your current life, extended five years.
- 2Draft Plan B: what you would do if Plan A suddenly became impossible.
- 3Draft Plan C: what you would do if money and others’ opinions were not a factor.
- 4Score each on resources, what you like, confidence, and coherence with who you are.
What the evidence says
MechanisticGenerating multiple options before committing is consistent with research on choice and idea generation, where considering several alternatives improves decision quality over evaluating a single option. The specific three-plan format is a teaching device.
Honest caveat: The "three plans" structure itself is practitioner framing; the underlying value is divergence before convergence, not the number three.
Common mistake
Writing three near-identical plans (same job, slightly different title), which defeats the divergence the exercise exists to create.
IX Coach prompts you through genuinely distinct life directions and keeps the alternative paths alive so you don’t collapse to the first one too soon.
Practice this with IX Coach →