Bestselling author and CEO Michael Hyatt explains the basics of creating a life plan and the 3 questions to ask when making one, shares some prophetic wisdom from Steve Jobs, and talks about engineering your legacy, and why putting yourself first isn’t always selfish; it's of-service.

Michael Hyatt is the guest on today's show. And He is the

former CEO of Thomas Nelson publishing. So Michael, welcome

to the show.

Hey, thanks. Great to be on with you.

So tell me like, what exactly is this concept of life plan?

Yeah. So a life plan is basically a brief

written document, you know, not one of those big documents that

some of us prepare to the corporate world, that, you know,

we took three days or four days in an off site retreat, to

create and then we put it on the shelf and never looked at it

again, you know, this is a very brief document, eight to 15

pages. It covers every aspect of your life. And we talk about

where you want to be in all the major areas of your life. And

it's a document that you'll tweak and adjust as you go

through the seasons of your life. But the basic design is to

get the 30,000 foot view of your life, so that you don't end up

at a destination you didn't choose. And people do that all

the time. You know, they end up getting through their midlife

and they find that their health is not what they wanted, or

their marriage isn't what they had signed up for, or their

career is just stalled out. But the way to avoid that is to be

intentional. And I don't know of a better way to be intentional

than to create a life plan. It's like anything else. You got to

plan for it if you're gonna get a different

Yeah. And you, you you use this phrase, you call it the drift.

Yeah, I love this concept. And it really came from

an experience that my wife Gail and I had when we've been

married 10 years, we decided to go on a vacation to celebrate

our 10 year anniversary. Only problem was we didn't have that

much money. But we took all of our airline miles and we went to

Hawaii. When we got there. We ended up money for the hotel and

a rental car, but not a lot of money for entertainment. But we

found out that the hotel was offering free snorkeling

lessons. And they were going to teach us in the swimming pool

and they were going to take us out onto the reef. So we did

that. And when we got out into the reef, I mean, our heads

exploded. We could not believe how amazing that was. So we

discovered that we could rent snorkeling gear for $10 for the

entire week, we thought oh my gosh, this is unbelievable. So

the next morning after those snorkeling lessons, we went to

the lagoon that was adjacent to the hotel, okay, and we paddled

out into the water. And it was like swimming in an aquarium.

All these multicolored fish and the seaweed was swaying and

reflecting the sunlight. And we were totally captivated, totally

distracted. 45 minutes later, we look up into our horror, we'd

been caught in a riptide and we were way out to see the hotel

look like a toy in the distance. And so Gale pulled her it up.

And she screamed, fortunately, we were still together, we had a

boogie board, which was also a blessing. She said, What are we

going to do? And I said, we're going to swim like crazy for the

shore. And so it took us like an hour to get back, we collapsed.

But that became for us a central metaphor for how most people

live. They just drift through life, they don't wake up in the

morning and say, You know what, I think sometime in my middle

life, I want to have a heart attack, you know, I'm gonna

gradually get overweight, until I just have a health breakdown

and a health crisis. Or they don't start out after they leave

their wedding and say, you know, I want to grow gradually apart.

Until we end up in separation or divorce. Or in my career, I

think I'll just hop out and get stuck, you know, in about five

years and never progress any further. People drift to those

destinations. It's what happens when we get distracted. It's

what happens when we don't have a plan. And we're just drifting

through life. And here's the thing, no one ever drifted to a

destination, they would have chosen.

Have you always had a life plan?

No, so here's what happened. Um, like a lot of

people, I had a plan for my work. But the truth is, life is

a lot more than work. And I want to win at work, but I want to

succeed at life. But initially, I was highly driven in my work,

and I was very successful in my work. But in about the year

2000, I had taken over one of the divisions at Thomas Nelson

Publishers, we had 14 divisions at the time, the Division I

became the general manager of was dead last in every single

metric. So yeah, sales growth, return on investment, return on

assets, all those things were just upside down. So the CEO

said to me, he said, Okay, how long is it going to take you to

turn this division around? profitable? I just picked the

number out of the air. I didn't know I'd said three years. He

said, Okay, you got it. So I went back to my team I shared

with him what I thought we needed to do. Everybody started,

you know, working together, but we were on the road constantly.

We went from number 14 to number one in 18 months. That's why I

ended up as the CEO. But here's the problem. It came at a cost.

Because I was on the road all the time, I wasn't paying

attention to what I was eating, I wasn't working out like I

should. I felt like I was drifting apart from Gail and my

relationship with her. Other members of my team, were doing

it. And I finally went to John Maxwell, who was one of my

authors that I was publishing at Thomas Nelson, and he'd become a

good friend, and a mentor. And I said, John, I don't think this

story is going to end well. If I continue drifting, like I'm

drifting. I've gotta have something, I gotta I gotta

figure this out, because it's not sustainable. And he said to

me, I want to introduce you to Daniel Harkavy, who's the CEO of

building champions, which is a coaching company. And he said, I

think you should talk to him. So I hired Dale as my executive

coach. First thing that Daniel did with me is he said, buddy,

let's create a life plan, because I get that you have a

plan for your career, but it's not working so well with the

rest of your life. And we need to plan for those other domains

of your life. And so we did that. And we took, I took an

entire day. And that's what we asked for in the book as people

give us a day. And we created this life plan, I created this

life plan, ran it by Daniel, and I've had one ever since. And

it's been major, probably the most major thing in my life, to

help me not only win at work, but to succeed at life.

So did you and Gail, like, do this together?

Gail and I have been married for 30, almost 38

years. And we have five daughters are all grown now all

of them are very successful in their own right. But yeah, it

was really when they were in their teenage years that I

finally decided that I needed to get this life plan together. But

it made all the difference. I know till and where I would have

ended up in my personal life. If I had not gotten the life plan

and gotten the vision for what was possible in my marriage. And

in my parenting in my health and every other domain.

You know, some people still kind of think about their

lives in like the second segmented compartments, do you

think that they are really segmented? Or are? Are they all

connected? And it really is this holistic view? or kind of like,

What's your thought on that?

It's holistic. I mean, we for the sake of

abstraction, for the sake of focusing on him, we divide them

up. But the truth is, all these things are interrelated. So for

example, I worked for guy one time, who was going through a

divorce. And it was brutal. It was very contested, it was very,

a lot of anger, a lot of frustration, a lot of

resentment, the guy was totally unavailable at work, this was my

boss, he would come in at about 10. In the morning, he was

completely sidetracked by what was going on with his divorce,

his head was not in the game, he was not engaged. And that went

on for about a year. So these different areas affect

everything else, if you have a health crisis, you know, you

have a heart attack, it's going to have an impact on your

family, it's going to have an impact on your work, it's going

to have an impact on your friendships. So you can you can

separate them for the purpose of planning. But they show up

together as a seamless whole part of my life plan is to make

sure that I get enough sleep. Why? Because sleep is directly

related to your ability to focus. But that's why you know,

sometimes you get up and you're tired, and you're trying to read

something in the morning, and you have to read the same page

three or four times, because you're tired. You know, you

didn't get enough sleep out. On the other hand, you know, I

think sometimes when I get to the end of the day, and I'm

trying to do a complex project, and Gale will say to me, You

know what, why don't you just go to bed? Because you're like, 10

times better in the morning. Why? Because I'm rested.

So how do you create a life plan? So tell us about how.

It's pretty simple, but the life plan is

basically the answer to three incredibly important, powerful

questions. Okay. Okay. So I'm gonna give these to you. Yeah.

Okay. So the first question is, how do you want to be

remembered? Now, kind of the myth of our society, is that

you're going to live forever, you know, we conveniently put

six sick people out of our line of vision, people that are

dying, you know, we put those out of our field of vision, you

know, because we act like we're gonna live forever. But the

truth is, we're all gonna die. And Steve Jobs said that this

was faster. He said this two years before he died, almost

prophetically. He said that facing death was the single most

important tool he had for making life's most important decisions.

And that was at a commencement address at Stanford University.

And it's true. So one of the things that we do in this

section of the book and answer to this question is we have you

imagine that you're a guest at your own funeral. So just

imagine on the front row, there's your family, all the

people that are living now imagine if you were to die an

untimely death today. And on the front row are all the people

that you love the most. Directly behind them are the people that

you work with and your friends and your neighbors and the

people you go to church with? What would they be saying about

you? If they were asked to give a eulogy we hear and we have you

write that out? Write your eulogy. And for most people,

there's going to be a gap. They're gonna go, Ah, I need

more time. You know, because what my kids are probably going

to say is I work too much, or what um, They're having dinner

with them. I'm on my cell phone, and I'm entering email, and I'm

not paying attention to them, or I need more time to get in shape

or whatever it is. But here's the good news. You're not dead

yet. Right? So there's still time. So then we have you create

a series of legacy statements. And this is, this is one of my

favorite things to do. So you're not dead yet. And we have you

and we give you a little formula. So you know, for

example, I say, I want Gail to remember. And then, you know,

it's things like that I take long walks with her in the

evening, that we sit and watch the sunset, that I'm her best

friend. So we create these legacy statements. Because

here's the reality, all of us are going to leave a legacy.

Sometimes we think that's, you know, Margaret Thatcher will

have a legacy or Winston Churchill had a legacy. Or

Theodore Roosevelt had a legacy. But all of us will leave a

legacy. The only question is, is it going to be good? Or is it

going to be bad? And you and I can engineer those memories that

the things that people talk about when we ultimately pass?

We can engineer those conversations beginning today?

And that's, that's the first question, how do you want to be

remembered. So this is my one for Gail. I said, I want Gail to

remember how I loved her, understood her, pursued her and

helped her accomplish her dreams. I want her to remember

specific times that we shared together times, we laughed,

times, we cried, times, we spent discussing things that were

important to both of us, the times, we just held one another

and watch the sunset, or here's one for how I want my

colleagues, the people that work with me, my company, I say are

one of my colleagues to remember my servant leadership, my

integrity, my humility, and my commitment to having fun, I want

them to remember how much they learned and grew as a result of

knowing me. Most of all, I want them to remember how I stood for

the greatness in them, and empower them to accomplish more

than they ever thought possible. So I do one of those for each

major category of my life. And the second question is, what is

important to you? Now you probably know what's important

to your spouse, you know, what's important to your boss, you

know, what's important to your customers? You know, we all know

what's important to other people, but this is a question

about you what's important to you. Because if we don't know

what our own priorities are, that it's gonna be very

difficult to order our life in a way that gets us what we want to

get. So we have you identified the major categories of your

life, and it's going to be different depending on the

season of life you're in, like, once you guys have kids, that's

gonna be a completely different game than the one you're playing

now. And your priorities will shift, you know, your your

priorities can shift if you've got a new business, you know,

all of us that have been through that certainly understand that.

But you know, for me, for example, you know, and by the

way, once we identify the different categories, and we

asked you to rank them, so for me, you know, it's God first,

it's me next. And you know why? It's like, when the flight

attendant comes out, does the little thing before you take

off, they say, put the face mask, you know, the oxygen mask

on yourself first, before you attempt to help somebody else.

If you don't take care of yourself, you're not going to be

of much use to anybody else. So the purpose is not being

selfish, the purpose is to be of service. So I got to take care

of me to be of service to somebody else. So to get that,

that list down, and I tell you another quick story. During the

recession, when I was the CEO of Thomas Nelson, I took a much

needed vacation after you know, months of hand to hand combat

slugging it out, the recession Board gave me the approval guild

I took off for Denver on a Friday afternoon, we changed

planes in Dallas, I made the mistake of checking my email,

there was a message for the Chairman of my board said, Hey,

change your plans. We need to come in and talk about an issue

on Monday. And I need you to come back. And I said, I showed

it to Gail, her heart sank, my heart sank we'd had all this

plan. So I made a really hard decision. And it was scary. But

my priorities gave me the courage to make the right

decision in the face of that. I wrote him back and I said, I'm

sorry, I won't be there. My staff will be queued up to help

you. But I'm going on this vacation, because I need it for

the rest. And I need it for my relationship with Gail. And

those two priorities. And I didn't say this part, those two

priorities come ahead of you. And, and then I turned off my

email. Now, here's the funny thing. I got back to the office.

I asked my CFO, I said, What was that meeting about? He said,

Look at totally could have been handled by email. It was a non

event. And I almost scuttled my vacation for what was going to

be a non event, but because I had a list of priorities, and I

knew what came first, second, third and fourth, and I knew for

me at that time work was about number five on my list. It it

became a clear decision for me. It gave me clarity, and courage.

I love that and that is unique. So well. You're not

going to get the third answer here. So what is next for

Michael Hyatt?

I always want to make and I got this idea from

Dan Sullivan. But I always want to make my future bigger than my

past. So I have a 25 year plan, because I think it's important

to constantly be creating value constant It'll be stretching and

growing. To me happiness comes not in attaining anything. It

comes in the pursuit of the stuff that's important to me and

the stuff I feel called to pursue. So it's, it's feeling

like I'm growing, feel like I'm progressing. And for me, it's

really right now at this period of my life, it's about building

my team and pouring into their lives. So I've got a small team

of about 15 people, and they're my top priority. I just want to

build into their lives and make them great.

Michael, I just want to say thank you for who you are

and what you do and just for the countless number of people that

you inspire every day.

Thanks, great to be with you.