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LIFETIME BLUEPRINT

How Do I Plan My Life by Decades Instead of Years?

By Joshua S. Brogley · August 17, 2026

Part of the series How to Reflect on Your Life by Decade: The Complete Method

Planning by decades means zooming out far enough that a bad year stops looking like a verdict. The method: for each decade, score your domains during it and again at its end, name the two or three events that actually defined it, and write one honest reflection you could not have written at the time. Lifetime Blueprint gives every decade from your twenties onward its own scored reflection, seven in all, so the plan is a life-length arc, not a New Year list.

The year is the wrong unit

A year is short enough to be ruined by one event and long enough to feel like proof. Decades smooth the noise. Looking at your thirties as one object, scored and named, tells you what actually happened in a way twelve annual reviews never will.

During and At the End

The Blueprint scores each decade twice. During: how it felt inside it. At the End: how it reads once closed. People are routinely surprised. The hard decade scores higher at the end than it did during. That gap is perspective, made visible.

Name the defining events

Every decade gets its own reflection page next to the life-event templates: births, losses, moves, career turns, illness, faith shifts. Naming which three events actually made a decade what it was is the fastest route to knowing what your life is about.

Plan the next one from the last one

Once a decade is scored and named, the next one plans itself: which domains need the effort, which events you want in it, which letter you want to be able to write at its end. That is planning by decades, and it is the spine of the whole book. See also how to run the eight-domain audit.

Lifetime Blueprint

A guided journal built for the long arc of a life: eight domains, seven decades, twelve snapshots, eleven letters, one record honest enough to be inherited.

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Why plan by decades instead of yearly goals?

Yearly goals measure effort. Decades measure direction. Most of what matters, health, marriage, craft, faith, money, moves on a decade timescale, and reviewing at that scale is the only way to see it.

What is the During and At the End scoring in Lifetime Blueprint?

Each decade is scored twice: how it felt while you were living it, and how it looks once it closed. The gap between the two numbers is one of the most honest things you will ever write down.

written by the author, at the kitchen table, after work.