A perfect plan for the wrong life is still a failure.
A perfect plan for the wrong life is still a failure.
Most people skip the one step preventing it. They set goals first and ask who they are later, if they ask at all.
Whose goals are these?
Look at your current goals and trace where each one came from. A parent’s hope. A boss’s KPI. A friend’s renovation. A stranger’s highlight reel at 11pm.
Some of those goals fit you. Many arrived second-hand and moved in without signing a lease.
Most people know their phone settings better than their own values.
Second-hand goals look fine on paper. They fail in practice, because they spend your time and energy on someone else’s definition of a good life.
A Tuesday morning promotion
It’s 7:40 on a Tuesday. An email lands: a promotion. More money, a bigger title, a team of twelve.
You say yes before lunch. It’s the next step. Everyone expects it.
Three months later you’re earning more and enjoying less. The role runs on back-to-back meetings, and you do your best work alone, early, with a clear problem to solve. The promotion bought status by spending your energy, and energy was the thing you valued most.
Nothing about the decision looked wrong on paper. It was made without knowing yourself first.
The 4 parts of knowing yourself
The AI Life Master Plan starts with Part Zero, Personal Brand Identity, before it touches a single goal. Part Zero covers 4 areas.
- Personality. How you’re wired. Do you recharge alone or with people? Do you plan or improvise? A strategy fighting your wiring burns out by March.
- Values. What you won’t trade. Pick 3. Every goal you set either honours them or costs them.
- Energy. What fills you and what drains you. Track it for 7 days and the pattern shows up fast.
- Personal SWOT. Your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Companies run one every year. Most people never run one at all.
Together these 4 give you a filter. Every goal, job offer, invitation and commitment goes through it before it reaches your calendar.
What AI changes
A journal waits for you to find the answers alone. AI asks follow-up questions.
Tell an AI assistant you value freedom and it asks what freedom looks like on a Tuesday. Tell it a meeting drained you and it asks which part. Those questions turn a vague feeling into a clear value you can plan around.
AI asks. You answer honestly. The insight is yours.
Your week three exercise
Take 20 minutes this week and answer 3 questions:
- Name 3 values you would protect even if it cost you money.
- What gave you the most energy last week? What drained you most?
- Which of your current goals did you choose, and which did you inherit?
Try this AI prompt:
Act as my personal strategist. Ask me 6 questions, one at a time, to uncover my core values, what gives me energy and what drains it. Then summarise my top 3 values in one sentence each and flag one current goal which conflicts with them.
Go deeper with the free prompts
This exercise is the starting point. The FREE Brand Identity Prompts PDF gives you 8 prompts from Part Zero of the book, covering your personality, values, energy and Personal SWOT. They work with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or whichever AI tool you already use.
Next week
From who you are to what you’re for. Building your purpose.
This series is for the person who plans everything at work and who is ready to know themselves as well as they know their job.
These ideas are explored further in The AI Life Master Plan.
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