A personal framework is a set of guidelines for how we spend our energy and time, in the light of our values, and our life commitments. How do you live out what matters to you the most, in your life? In your schedule? In your relationships? How do you hold onto your identity when algorithms increasingly choose for you?

Think of a personal framework as the regular principles and practices that you voluntarily commit to living out, whether or not you have a job, whether or not you have family responsibilities, wherever you live. Your framework is what holds everything else up.

Here’s the good news: You probably already have a personal framework operating in your life.

You probably already have:

• Roles and relationships in your life (and values associated with them)

• Routines

• Things you do for rest and renewal

All we’re doing here is getting those thoughts out of your head and writing them down. This will help you keep your focus on what you believe is most important.

The trick is to make it conscious by writing it down, and reviewing it regularly. That’s why it helps you stay on track.

This post is a series of prompts to help you do just that.

When you write down your commitments and review them regularly, you discover new ways to move toward the kind of life you want. You create a GPS for yourself to consult when things change or get chaotic. You keep your true priorities in view, no matter what life throws at you.

A personal framework has these elements:

• Roles, Relationships, and Values (identifying your roles and relationships is a short-cut to articulating your values)

• Routines

• Rest and Renewal

And this practice:

• Regular Review

First Things First: Paper, Digital, or Hybrid?

Start by asking yourself this: When I am reflecting on things, how and where do I like to do that? (Hint: If you like to journal, do you do that with an app, or with a notebook?)

Second, ask yourself, what’s going to be accessible for me, what will be easy for me to find and work with on a regular basis?

Choose what you like to work with.

Considerations for using paper: If you decide to use paper, it’s nice to have a notebook with an index and numbered pages. You can buy notebooks with pre-printed index (table of contents) pages and numbered pages, which is more expensive. You can also find a notebook you like to write in, set aside a few pages for an index, and number the pages yourself, which doesn’t take very long. *

You could also just start by writing or printing these things on a piece of paper, and not bother with a notebook unless you find you want to write more. Your call.

Don’t make it hard.

Considerations for using an app: The key here is to make sure whatever application you use, that it’s enjoyable and accessible. You want to be able to review this regularly. It’s also important to be able to focus when you write this, and when you reflect on it. As this is also a personal document, keep privacy and security considerations in mind.

Use materials you enjoy using. Whether you love using Notion or notebooks, the main thing is using something you’ll look forward to coming back to. This is a living document, not a “one and done.”

Start Here: Write Down Your Roles and Relationships, and the Values Associated with Them

Don’t overthink this. What are your various relationships and roles in life? We’re going big picture here. Just quickly write down the roles and relationships you have in your life, right now.

Here are some prompts to get you started:

Your personal roles - family relationships (child, sibling, parent, aunt, uncle, grandparent); friendships; affiliative communities (communities you volunteer to join, like a writing group or a religious community)

Your roles at work and in the wider community - work environment (employee, colleague, stay-at-home parent, founder, professional); the wider community (board member, volunteer, citizen, advocate)

Also consider how you relate personally to various aspects of life:

Your relationship to life in general - I use spiritual language in my personal framework, but you might not. Here, we’re addressing your connection to a reality that is greater than yourself, whether you think of it as existence, Life-with-a-capital-L, God, the cosmos…

Your relationship with your self (body, mind, spirit)

Your relationship with the natural world

Your relationship with technology

What kind of person do you aspire to be, in relation to life in general, toward other people, toward your work or profession, toward the natural world, and toward the human-made world? What are your values for the life you want to live?

This is where you write those things down. Some ideas may come easily to you, some may be more difficult. If you get stuck, don’t worry about it, just write down the ones that come to mind easily. It’s important to write it down though, because your values are surprisingly easy to forget.

Write Down Your Essential, Minimum Household Routines

Don’t be ambitious.

We are not looking for an Instagrammable home; this is about writing down the things that you know are important to your sense of peace, during a moderately challenging time.

Write down the bare minimum: write down the routines that keep you sane during, say, the holiday season, or a busy season at work.

What actions do you do on a regular basis, that keep you feeling grounded in your environment? Your environment is important.

For me personally, those things would be: making the bed every morning, emptying all the household trash once a week, clearing my desk when I finish my work, and cleaning the dishes daily.

That’s it!

If you come over to my house, you might notice that the place needs a good dusting. And another person may be fine with some dishes in the sink, but dust really bothers them. This is not about meeting someone else’s standards; this is about articulating your own; and it is highly personal.

The measure is, what are the essential, minimal routines in your environment that a) personally bring you peace, and b) that you can keep up with during a moderately busy time?

Keep it minimal.

Write Down Your Rhythms of Rest and Renewal

Write down how you rest, recover, and restore yourself.

In the book Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang makes the scientific case for how important rest is for doing high level creative work; and, what kind of rest is truly restorative (Pang 2016, p. 10):

Rest is not something that the world gives us. It’s never been a gift. It’s never been something you do when you’ve finished everything else. If you want rest, you have to take it. You have to resist the lure of busyness, make time for rest, take it seriously, and protect it from a world that is intent on stealing it.

It’s important to take time off in ways that truly restore you.

I think of rest, loosely, in two categories: daily self-care, and recreational activities.

So for me, daily self-care means this: I make time to write every day, I walk and/or do some yoga stretches every day, and I do everything I can to get a good night’s sleep. If I sleep well, the next day is almost bound to be pretty good.

Maybe you know you need to go for a run a few times a week. Write that down. Or maybe you know you need to meditate for 10 minutes a day, or journal in the mornings, or turn off the smartphone on a regular basis. Write it down.

For me, recreational activities mean these: I schedule time to visit public gardens, parks, and art exhibits; I go hiking and biking and bird-watching; I make time to draw; I schedule visits and outings with family and friends. Get specific. What restores your spirit? Write it down.

It took me a long time to take rest seriously. Once I did, I saw what a difference it’s made in my enjoyment of life and my creative output, so now I’m intentional about it.

Many of us, as adults, do not know how to rest and restore ourselves. If that’s you, start by writing down the things you enjoyed doing when you were a child.

Do a Regular Review

This is the key.

This is what takes your personal framework from a wish list to something that actually shapes your life, and helps you remember who you are, and what you are about, in our noisy world.

Write down your plan for how you will review these notes to yourself. Reviewing your commitments regularly is that GPS part. Like opening a maps app, it helps you to figure out, on the fly, how to get where you want to go in your life.

I review my personal framework at least once a week. Ask yourself: what went well; what didn’t go so well; what am I going to do next week?

This is how I do it: Anne-Laure le Cunff, founder of Ness Labs, created a plus, minus, next system that’s clear, quick and effective. Here’s her video showing how quick and simple this really is.

Another simple way to do a review is to write down each week what you want to stop doing, start doing, and keep doing.

Don’t overthink this. A few notes to yourself will do. Make it actionable.

I look at my past week or two and make a plan for the next week, just a few sentences about what I want to focus on, in the coming week. If my past week was hectic, I make a note to myself to schedule in more rest and renewal time the next week. If I find that I wasn’t living up to one of my values, I make a note to practice the behavior I want to live into. For example, let’s say practicing gratitude is one of your values (and gratitude may also be associated with improving your health). If you look back on your last week and feel like you were taking important things for granted, you might make a plan for the next week to write down one thing you appreciated that day, before you go to bed.

As you work with your framework, you may find that you want to revise it. That’s okay, this is a living document - about how YOU want to live. Expect that both you, and your framework, will change over time.

Those are the essentials for a personal framework.

If you’re less wordy than me, you can fit it on a page or two.

Other Helpful Things to Write Down for Your Personal Framework

A personal framework can also be your archive for general sources of inspiration and life lessons. (This is why I use a notebook for mine, and not a page or two.)

If you expand your personal framework, you might not want to review the whole thing each week (but do review your roles, routines, and rest strategies). It can be useful to include things that help you stay focused on the kind of life you aspire to live.

What else might you want to have on hand to refer to?

• personal policies / personal boundaries (one of mine is: ‘Wait 24 hours before responding to an upsetting text or email.’)

• things you want to try someday

• your linchpin phrase

• inspirational quotes

• your battery tracker - what drains you, and what energizes you?

• write down a description of your ideal future, and your feared future

• life lessons

• your talents and gifts (check out VIA character strengths for a start)

Try it out, experiment with it. It is yours.

References

Pang, Alex Soojung-Kim. Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less. Basic Books, 2016.

Notes

*I make an index (table of contents) section and put page numbers in nearly all of my notebooks. Count out 6 pages or so from the front or back of the notebook (your call). Put a sticky note tab or, hey, even a paperclip, separating your index pages from the rest of the notebook, so you can flip to them quickly. Then number the pages in the notebook. When you write something you want to look up later, note the topic and page number in your index, and you’re good to go.