Life Cycle System: Any system that shows how one goes through different phases in life. This allows to better understand how we should live and to plan accordingly. These systems can be sequential or circular.
The world presents a simple view of how we are supposed to live. We grow up under the supervision of our parents, once we are old enough we ship off to college. We get a degree that we want at the time and hopefully can allow us to make a good living. Once we graduate, we search for a job in which we will have throughout our life. We’ll probably jump from company to company and look to move up the ladder. As we do this, we’ll look to start a family. After we eventually send our kids off to college, we will seek the comfort of retirement. It’s a simple view of life; one in which our institutions are set up to promote. However, it is one that is not natural to us when it is stretched over the course of a 80 years. It is one that was created as a byproduct of our modern world. Instead, we should focus on creating systems that account for the natural rhythm of our lives. The cycles we tend to go through and how that will affect our plans for the future.

The System

Life cycle systems are used to help understand how to plan our lives. The main theme for our life surround what I call The D.E.I. Cycle. This stands for discover, endeavor, and interlude. It is the basis for how we should design our lives. To better simplify it you can think of it as think, build, and enjoy. It starts with the idea that we must know what we want to do first and then learn how to do it. We are intellectual creatures that are lifelong learners. We thrive on exploring and discovering new things. Once this phase is completed it then moves into the build phase. This is where we implement on what we learned in the previous phase. It is where we do the work of bringing things to life. Finally comes the enjoy phase, where we enjoy the fruits of our labor. This is where we relax and do the more enjoyable things in life. Things that we didn’t have time to do in the previous 2 phases. This tends to be the natural rhythm of our life.


Cycle: Discover (Think) -> Endeavor (Build) -> Interlude (Enjoy)

Implementation

While The D.E.I. Cycle is very similar to the way our modern lives are structured, it is not a life long cycle. It is a short term cycle in which a person should go through several times throughout their life. For some, the number may be drastically higher. So while the college then work then retirement fulfills the cycle, due to the extended length of our lives it now seems too dragged out. It also poorly handles change as a shorter cycle would be better adaptable to a modern world. The biggest drawback is if the cycle is too short, because this wouldn’t allow you to get good at anything. Generally the shortest the entire cycle should be is 4 to 5 years and the longest it should be is 8 to 10 years.