# Developing a strategy for life What should we do with our life and who should we be? It's the most important question we need to ask ourselves. The question can be overwhelming and we often don't even know how to begin to answer it. But it's an important question because we otherwise can't function. I will refer to the set of behaviours and beliefs that determines who we are and what we do as the individuals life strategy. Its effectively your strategy for navigating through life. Unfortunately, many people adopt behaviours and beliefs (strategies) based on what is expected from them by the people around them and never try to answer this question for themselves. It leads to a crisis within the individual and a feeling of pointlessness. My goal with this essay is to develop my own strategy. Before developing a strategy, we first need to understand what our purpose is. The meaning or purpose of life is probably an even more terrifying and unanswerable question. You could spend a life time studying this question from a variety of angles (theological, historical, biological). The Here are the questions we need to face to develop our strategy. 1. What is our purpose, or objective? How will you know you led a successful life? 2. What are the rules of the game? How does nature and society behave? 3. How do the other players behave and what are their strategies? 4. What are my resources, abilities and competitive advantages? It's impossible to know the answers to each of these questions. We can't know all of science, the meaning of life, what the limits of our abilities are etc, in any reasonable time frame to then come up with a strategy for life and then live that life. Our answers will evolve as we learn so we need to build a strategy that allows for uncertainty and adaptability, resulting in our last step: 5. How do I explore the space of available strategies and update my strategy? ## Related - [[Finding a sense of purpose]] - [[Life Strategy]] - [[Career Strategy]] - [[The Human Imperative]]