Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
— Ferris Bueller
Deep down, I think everyone wants to find meaning in their work.
We want to spend our time working toward something that really matters to us. That’s the difference between being motivated to work each day to just clocking in for the paycheck.
In this post, we’ll discuss a framework that can help us plan our life’s work. From singular actions to our grand purpose & principles, we can make sure our life’s work is meaningful.
What Is the Six-level Model?
The Horizons model is a framework from Getting Things Done that helps us review our work at six levels. This model allows us to plan our more granular daily actions so that they align with our greater goals and purpose.
How Does the Six-level Model Work?
The beauty of this model is in its scope – which starts at the daily level with things we can directly action, and builds up to our greatest purpose in life.
The idea is that once we know our actions at the more granular levels, we’ll have a better foundation to start reviewing goals at the higher levels.
For example, it can be hard to plan our longer-term vision and purpose if we’re constantly missing deadlines. That’s why we start from the ground floor of daily tasks and work our way up to our purpose.
By ensuring each of the horizons align with the others, we get a clear idea of where we’re headed and any potential gaps in our planning. The framework promotes a proactive approach to planning our work.
This model brings both meaning to our life’s work and a clear roadmap to achieving it.
Why Is the Six-level Model Important?
Oftentimes our work seems to focus around other people’s priorities.
I personally don’t want my life’s purpose to take a backseat in my work-life. But if we only focus on our daily to-do list, that tends to be the default setting. If we’re not careful, we may spend our entire careers focusing on the details without ever considering the bigger picture.
We’ll probably also spend time feeling lost, which means we’re more likely to stay in one place forever, working for someone else. Just because we’re not sure what’s best for us, we may end up following the path of least resistance.
It’s pretty unlikely that we’ll achieve our life’s purpose if we don’t have a coherent framework to align our daily actions with our greater life purpose.
This model acts as a system to help achieve our goals.
What Are the Six Levels?
Below are the six levels that, once aligned, allow us to build a meaningful career.
Ground: Current tasks
First we manage our current tasks on a day-to-day basis. We need to have a clear understanding of how we spend our current time before we can review the next level.
Horizon 1: Current projects
Once we have a handle on our current tasks, we can list out our current projects. At this level, we should ensure that our current tasks help progress our current projects.
For example, we might notice a project without any associated tasks. In that case, we would revisit our list of tasks to ensure our projects progress smoothly.
Horizon 2: Areas of Focus & Accountability
Once we understand all the tasks associated with our current projects, we look at our areas of focus and accountability. These focus areas are the key areas of life & work where we want to achieve results.
This might include your job role, being a parent, your role within the community, and so on. These areas tend to involve several projects that allow us to carry out the role successfully.
This view may help us see the potential for a new project within one of our focus areas.
Horizon 3: Goals
From there, we can focus on our goals. This is where we begin to direct our focus to the future. Goals are what we want to be experiencing in life in the next 1-2 years.
This might include aiming for a promotion, applying for a job at a different company or even starting your own business.
At this level, we might identify new focus areas and projects that will help us achieve our goals.
Horizon 4: Vision
Next, we can focus on our vision, which projects 3-5 years into the future. Our vision helps us understand our longer-term career options and industry trends.
For example, we might realise that a new trend is on the horizon in our industry. In that case, we should set new short-term goals for the company to stay ahead of the curve.
Horizon 5: Purpose & Principles
Finally, when we know how we’ll achieve our vision, we can begin to consider what’s needed to achieve our grand purpose and principles. At this final stage we’re contemplating the deepest meaning behind why we exist.
Completing this level in the model is an incredibly fulfilling experience, because it allows us to think about our lives in the broadest sense. We get to the root of what we believe in. We all need to find our meaning in life.
And at this point, we can revisit each horizon to ensure we work towards actualising our purpose.
How Did I Structure My Six-Level Framework?
Ground: Current tasks
When I review my current tasks, I tend to refer to my Bullet Journal. I’m already aware of my daily tasks and try to build these into my productivity system.
Examples of my current tasks include:
- Specific training that I’ve offered to run at work
- Some element that I’m building into a report or project
- Specific article or podcast episode I’m putting together
Horizon 1: Current projects
Projects are like bundles of tasks with a common purpose. Rather than limit myself to focusing on each task as it’s due, I’ve found it it helps to aggregate tasks that have a similar objective. Tasks can be aggregated to plan longer in advance.
Most of my current projects fall along the lines of:
- Complete the analytics report I’m building
- Produce research and provide a technical recommendation
- Build out blog and podcast content
To give an example of how projects can simplify tasks, my initial blog project was to write 90 posts. One year later I’m nearly there, having written 80 posts, which averages out at more than 1.5 articles per week.
I doubt I’d be as far along with this project if I’d focused on the task-level view and only considered the individual articles. I would have found it more difficult to motivate myself every few days to post a new article.
With the project view, I managed to streamline the process each week by taking the Jay-Z approach:
I’m on to the next one, on to the next one…
At its core, that’s the beauty of this framework. It allows us to see our granular work at a more top-line level.
Horizon 2: Areas of Focus & Accountability
At the moment, I have two key areas of my life & work where I want to achieve results: my current full-time job and content creation.
My current work role involves providing Tech & Data Support for clients in a Digital Marketing environment. Many of my projects come from this area of focus.
My content creation role involves managing and building out this website. This role will soon expand out into creating YouTube videos and podcasts for a true multimedia experience.
At this level, I make sure that my on-going and upcoming projects contribute to developing my focus areas.
Horizon 3: Goals
Moving onto my personal goals, these are what motivated me to expand my areas of accountability beyond my full-time job.
My areas of focus allow me to work towards my goals, which tend to span a period of 1-2 years into the future.
My goals for the near future include:
- Have the freedom to travel and experience the world
- Focus on my personal goals and projects
- Create content that helps people become more mindful and productive
With these goals, I have clear motivation and a longer-term understanding of why I’m working on projects that are not yet profitable.
Horizon 4: Vision
My goals should also align with my vision, which projects 3-5 years into the future. Our vision should highlight longer-term career options and trends.
As my current vision, I identified the following:
- Have a steady income from my personal projects that allows me to focus all my time on my creative projects
- Be my own boss
My shorter-term goals align with my vision, as each focuses on personal projects that create value for real people.
Over time I aim to monetise these projects, so I can spend all my time creating.
Horizon 5: Purpose & Principles
In the final horizon, I have my purpose and principles.
Ultimately, I want to help people be more mindful and productive. Too many people are stressed out these days, and I know it’s possible to be productive while maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
I used to be a stressed and anxious person myself, and I know there’s real value in learning mindfulness, along with Stoicism. I feel like mental health only became a talking point in the last few years, but it still doesn’t seem like a full priority yet.
I’d also like the freedom to focus my energy on new and exciting projects, as I see fit. I feel life is too short to spend behind a desk following other people’s orders.
Not that there’s anything wrong with a traditional job, I just feel I’m too passionate about my work and creativity to limit my career to serving others.
In a sense, this website is my entry into entrepreneurship. It aligns with my grand purpose, while being something I can affect with my daily actions.
The Six Level Model in a Nutshell
The Horizons framework allows us to review our work at six levels with the purpose of planning our granular daily actions to our grand purpose.
First we need to be managing our current tasks, the things we have to do on a day-to-day basis. Then we can align our tasks with our projects. Once we understand all our tasks and projects, we review our areas of focus and accountability, where we want to achieve results.
At this point, we can begin to take a future-facing view and focus on what’s needed to achieve our goals in the next 1-2 years. Then we can focus on our longer-term vision, 3-5 years in the future. And finally we make sure all our work aligns with our life’s grand purpose and principles.
With this model, we make sure our daily actions align with the deepest meaning of why we exist. By reviewing our work from the most granular daily tasks to our future-facing goals and purpose, we can take control of our lives.
That is how we can optimise our time on this planet for maximal fulfilment.
Find and create meaning in your work-life with the Six-level Model and Mind & Practice today.