Bolles: The Three Boxes of Life

Right Livelihood

Planning Your Life

  An introduction to the radical idea that our lives are worth organizing, planning, and managing.
  Much of what Richard Bolles argues for in this book has already become widely known -- that in spite of the culture and the world's insistence that first we get an education and then we get a job and then we retire, it isn't necessarily a good idea to remain in those three boxes. While getting an education, many have to work; to survive in a job we need to continue to learn; retirement without meaningful activity or learning may be boring and not exactly what we had in mind.

  How to get out of and around these issues are what Bolles book is about. It is useful and can help you joggle your mind out of its usual ruts and assumptions. It includes, for example, techniques for self-assessment and learning how to prioritize.
  Bolles identifies four major issues: finding out what's happening, surviving, identifying meaning or discovering mission, and evaluating effectiveness in each of the three major life areas.
  As one reader put it, The Three Boxes of Life is a "primer on building a balanced, satisfying life." The emphasis is on building, and on balance, and on satisfaction.

CONTENTS
1. The Three Boxes of Life

2. How To Get Out of Them: LIFE/work Planning

3. Toward a Balanced Life: LIFE LONG LEARNING

4. Toward a Balanced Life: LIFE LONG WORKING

5. Toward a Balanced Life: LIFE LONG LEISURE OR PLAYING

Richard N. Bolles

The Three Boxes of Life: And How To Get Out of Them: An Introduction to Life-Work Planning

Ten Speed, 1978

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from Chapter One:
What's Happening?
  First, however, we need to notice another characteristic of these three periods in our life, which turns them into boxes. This is the fact that there are different issues, perplexities or problems in life that we all have to wrestle with. And that these issues have a lind of logical order in which we tackle them. I believe this can best be illustrated with the aid of a fantasy. Imagine that tonight you go to sleep in your own familiar bed, ur own familiar room. Tomorrow morning you awaken. You are still in your own bed, butto your absolute astonishment you and your bed have been transported into the middle of some mysterious jungle. All around you, ferns and tall trees, exotic-looking flowers, mysterious sounds, and sunlight filtering through the trees. Now, what kinds of issues, perplexities, or problems do you have to work through? Well, the first issue -- or family of issues -- that you would have to work your wya through, it seems to me, is one which we might entitle: WHAT'S HAPPENING? You know the kind of questions that would naturally occur toou right off the bat: Where am I? How did I get here? What on earth is happening? Is this truly a jugle? What kind of jungle is it? Are there dangerous beats or people here? What kind of food and drink is available. And so forth. Your absolute first need would be to settle this question of WHAT'S HAPPENING -- or, at least, to get a kind of temporary 'fix' on it. Until that happens, the question would preoccupy your attention, and you would be pretty well immobilized, and thus prevented from doing anything else. (p. 11)

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