The Thinking Behind North Star

I think a good life should be designed intentionally.

Not rigidly, and not around a single financial number, career title, place, or achievement. The more useful question is: what kind of lived experience am I trying to create over the next chapter of my life, and what would need to be true to make that possible?

That is what I mean by a North Star.

For me, the North Star is not a destination. Life does not happen at a single point; it happens across days, weeks, years and chapters. So the real objective is not simply to reach a summit. It is to create the right pattern of lived experience along the way.

That is why I think the pattern is the achievement.

The pattern is the achievement

Conventional planning tends to overemphasize endpoints: reach a certain net worth, make Managing Director, move somewhere desirable, retire at a certain age. Those milestones can matter, but they are fleeting. What matters more is the life surrounding them.

What would an unusually good week look like? How much time would I spend working, learning, exercising, traveling, creating, helping family, or being with people I care about? What should the period from 50 to 55 feel like? What might need to change from 55 to 60?

The planning process therefore has to begin above the level of tactics. In investment work, I would never construct a portfolio without understanding what the portfolio is for. The same principle applies to life.

Discovering what matters

Before making decisions about money, career, geography or time, I want to understand what I actually value: autonomy, family, health, achievement, relationships, learning, adventure, security, contribution, or something else. But values are not always clear in advance. Sometimes I recognize them by noticing which experiences leave me most fulfilled, which commitments feel worth making, and which trade-offs I am willing to accept.

That is why I find a vision board useful—not as decoration or a fixed blueprint, but as a way to examine the life I might want to live. I can begin with chapters of life, then imagine the experiences and activities within them, right down to an ordinary Tuesday. Looking closely at those choices can reveal the values underneath them. In turn, a clearer understanding of those values can reshape the picture.

The process works in both directions: reflection informs the vision, and imagining the lived experience sharpens the reflection.

I am no longer asking how to maximize wealth. I am asking what level and structure of wealth is required to support the life I actually want.

Autonomy over time

That is why financial independence matters so much to me. Not because wealth is the ultimate objective, but because autonomy over time is.

Most of us spend a large portion of our lives exchanging time for money. Work can provide meaning, relationships, challenge and achievement, and I do not see financial independence as an argument against work. I see it as the ability to make work increasingly elective.

Accumulated capital is stored optionality. It is the ability to fund future time without continuously selling that time to someone else. I sometimes think of financial independence as moving from renting your life toward owning more of it.

Career sits inside that system. It can build skills, confidence, relationships, capital, credibility and opportunity. It can accelerate financial independence and create international mobility. But career is usually a means rather than the final objective. The question is not simply whether I can climb higher. It is whether climbing higher still supports the life I am trying to build.

Geography matters for the same reason. Having lived and worked internationally for much of my adult life, I have come to see location as a variable rather than a fixed constraint. Where we live affects relationships, education, healthcare, taxes, culture, recreation, cost of living, career options and proximity to family.

The point is not that everyone should move abroad. It is that geography should be considered intentionally rather than inherited by default.

Life is a system

All of these variables interact, which is why I do not think life can be optimized one category at a time. A financially optimal decision may be a poor family decision. A great career move may create geographic strain. A move that improves lifestyle may reduce proximity to aging parents.

Life is a system.

These considerations inform one another rather than unfolding in a rigid sequence.

I can begin with a picture of an ordinary week and work backward toward the values it expresses—or start with a conviction about what matters and explore how to live it. Either way, I expect to review, learn and adjust. What I want to avoid is becoming so occupied with activity that I stop asking what the activity is for.

Making distant outcomes more attainable

I am also deeply interested in the gap between outcomes that initially appear unattainable and the smaller decisions through which they become more reachable.

Becoming senior in a career, moving internationally, achieving financial independence, changing industries or learning a language can all look impossibly distant from the beginning. Often we see only the end state, not the chain of causation underneath it.

Once the chain becomes visible, the problem changes. The question is no longer, “How could I possibly do that?” It becomes, “What would I need to learn first?” Then: “What comes after that?”

Difficult things remain difficult. But skills can be learned, risk can be managed, and large ambitions can often be broken down into smaller, more attainable steps.

That idea connects directly to Self-Coaching Essentials, the book I published years ago. Its premise was that we can become more deliberate about our outcomes when we learn to step outside ourselves, examine our choices more clearly and take greater ownership of the process.

I still believe that ownership belongs with the individual.

No advisor, coach, planner or expert can define a good life on someone else’s behalf. But that does not mean doing everything alone. A good advisor can act almost like an additional member of an extended personal board of directors: asking better questions, exposing blind spots, challenging assumptions and helping make the path more visible.

A North Star that evolves

The North Star is not a fixed destination, nor is it a vision of life that we can define once and simply pursue.

Our circumstances change, our understanding deepens, and the things we value may take on different meanings at different stages of life.

I prefer to think in chapters rather than a single final destination, allowing the direction to evolve as my circumstances and understanding change.

What matters is cultivating the awareness to recognize those changes, and the willingness to allow that understanding to shape how we live.

That is the perspective I am trying to put into practice.

And it remains very much a work in progress.