Summary: When it comes to making long-term plans for our lives, we all go through a "dream stage"...where we just kind of day dream about what our life might be like. Seriously, we’ve all, at some point in our life, thought about what it would be like to win the lottery or be super rich...and you kind of lose yourself in the dream. While I’m sure there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, it's really more productive to do some systematic ideation. By dreaming systematically, you'll likely improve your chances for success. For us, this is strategic simplicity. By going through a process of systematic ideation, you may come up with more questions than answers initially. But in the end, you'll probably be a lot closer to what you want and be able to formulate a real plan of action. Yes, truly strategic simple living! Read more...<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> Note: Our new book Supermom vs Super Mom is digital and will help you eliminate clutter in your life, too!<br> Buy Supermom vs Supermom<br> <br> Topic: Strategic Simple Living<br> Ok, so what is “systematic ideation” and how can you use it? Well, I’m sure there’s lots of different ways to systematically come up with ideas. I’m a bit of a tinkerer...kind of a MacGyver type and enjoy product design. I even recently had a company put one of my ideas into production and they’re getting ready to release it. But years ago, I read a book (I can’t for the life of me remember or find the title) that sparked my interest in systematic ideation.<br> But today we’re going to share one ideation tool with you that you might be able to use on your simplicity journey. We adapted this from a post we saw on Governing.com that had absolutely nothing to do with strategic simple living. Still, the tool was intriguing, so we adapted it for our use.<br> <br> The 4 Direction Ideation Tool<br> So here you go: A good way to be more systematic about your ideation is by looking in all four "directions". By that we mean, Outward, Inward, Backward and Forward. It’ll help if we give an example, so we’ll show you how we used this tool in our search for the “perfect” town or place for us to live. Of course, you can use it for any ideation exercise you wish!<br> <br> <br> So first we have Look Outward: We’re going to look at the local, regional, and national possibilities. We could even look internationally if we wanted.<br> Next we have Look Inward: What do we really want? What are our "must haves", and what are the "deal breakers?" Vanessa will break this down a bit in a minute and share some things we consider.<br> Look Backward: Doing a candid review of what has and hasn't worked in the past. What did we like about it, what did we dislike.<br> Finally, we have Look Forward: What do we want it to look like, feel like, be like?<br> <br> Our Search for the Perfect Place to Live<br> Back in Episode 49, Live the Life of Your Dreams, we talked about our “Freedoms From” and our "Freedoms To." One of those freedoms to was “Freedom To Choose Where & How We Live.” So, again, just to give you an example of using the tool on our quest for strategic simple living, let's look at our search for the “ideal” place for us to live.<br> So, before we start the 4 directions, here are some qualities we know our dream location will have:<br> <br> <br> A quality grocery store within walking distance<br> Close to downtown shops; coffee shops, bookstores, diners, local shops, etc...oh and free wi-fi is always nice...<br> We’d like to live near water. Not ocean...preferably a creek or river...or even a lake<br> Small acreage to maintain; ¼ - 1 acre max!<br> Good schools...or good home-school co-ops if needed<br> We’d prefer an empty lot to build to our exact liking<br> No size restrictions on home...for us that means small, not big<br> No Home Owner's Association (HOA) would be ideal<br> If HOA...
