My Intentions Manifesto

Over the last few years I have been absorbing content from various books and podcasts which has gradually been re-shaping the way that I try to live my life. Amongst this reading and listening has been quite a lot on aspects of productivity, Stoic and eastern philosophy, mindfulness and creativity (to list just the broad topics that come to mind immediately). Recently, I took the step of trying to boil this down to a series of short, simple principles that provide a kind of manifesto for my life. I can’t say that I necessarily always manage to live by these principles, but I have them written down and have them easily accessible so that I can glance through them and remind myself how I want to be. Initially, they changed quite a bit as I iterated them towards a state that I was happy with but the list seemed to settle down at 9 items which I think capture everything I want captured for now. I thought I would share them here. They are expressed not as instructions to myself but as intentions and so I am calling this list my Intentions Manifesto. It goes like this:

I intend to…

… be PRESENT

… be DELIBERATE [1]

… be PLAYFUL [2]

… focus on SINGLE STEPS

… take ACTION

… take the STAIRS [3]

… act with KINDNESS

… keep moving FORWARDS [4]

… leave things BETTER [5]

Notes:
[1] I often come back to the idea that whatever you do you should do it deliberately rather than accidentally.
[2] I loved Mark Rowlands exposition of the importance of play and being playful in his book ‘Running with the Pack’. He (sort of) defined play as being when you deliberately choose to do a task in a manner that makes it harder than it needs to be for no reason other than because you can. I liked that idea.
[3] This comes from Rory Vaden’s book ‘Take the Stairs’ and captures the/his idea that if you tackle the hard stuff now, what follows becomes easier but if you take the easy route now what follows is harder (‘Short-term easy = long-term difficult, short-term difficult = long-term easy’)
[4] I mean keep things/stuff moving forwards at all times not keep physically moving forwards although the latter is also good advice when running a long way!
[5] This comes from a podcast (it might have been The Unmistakable Creative interview with Jim Bunch but I can’t be sure without going back and listening again). Anyway, expressed in a slightly fuller form I mean that it is a good idea to always leave environments in a better state than you find them in. An environment could be the world around me generally but it might also be something small like the bathroom, my office or even my bag.