 Hey YouTube, this is Cesar Arada. I'd like to share with you how you can draw your entire life in one page past, present and future. I just did a workshop today with many students and several of them have asked me to do a video tutorial so they can do it by themselves in their own time at home in a common environment. I've never done personal development videos before and so that's not a scam or like a Internet-like business and so everything is in this video and you can use it and you know, it's a free information. So over the past years, I have developed and simplified this visualization method to help myself to make hard decisions such as choosing my field of studies, managing my career, but also resolve issues with my families or relationships. And every time using this method of visualization has helped me to clarify my situation and helped me make me more confident and make more meaningful and build a more meaningful life for myself, the ones around me and hopefully the world. So let's do this. So now it's a complicated visuals that you're seeing now, but I'm going to explain to you step by step. I'm using Google drawing here because it's easier for you to read on the screen because my handwriting is not so good and I recommend that you start with a simple pen and paper. So you're going to take a blank page and draw in the middle a line and going to write the date of today and right now. Then you will write almost at the top of the page the year that you were born and you can put in parenthesis your birth and at the bottom of the page is the year you Well, you don't know when you're going to die, but you know, maybe let's say that you're gonna leave a hundred years Good next so by now you should have a page that looks like this and So now I'm going to zoom in and at the top of the image you are going to add four categories top left education or job Then passions within s if you if you have many passions people and Locations location that places where you have been living or places where you have been traveling Good, and then you want to draw a Timeline so say If I didn't have very busy childhood, I can fit maybe like I'm 30 years old So maybe I can fit, you know my 21st years in just one third of the of the half top of the page And the rest of the half top of the page will be for the last ten years Which have been the busiest for me between my 20s and my 30s So it doesn't it doesn't have to be regular if you are the opposite and have a very busy childhood Then you may and a very settled adulthood, then you may have a busy Know upper part, which is would become more dense So I'm going to take my own life as an example to explain you how to fill in that this grid and I won't speak too much in the details about my own About my own stuff, but just to so you understand what you want to fill in the gaps So I start by the left column, which is the educational job because that's probably the the easiest to remember on the top of your head, so I I just went to a normal local school public schools and then I went to get my So that was in France then I went to the bull school, which is a craftsman school Where I developed this technique actually because I wanted to decide what what I will continue studying I wasn't sure if I was going to continue study craft or something else Then I continued and studied design in different institutions in in France and in the UK Then I applied for my master degree at the art college of art and design interactions And then I was lucky to be selected as a tech fellow And went to work at MIT and now have my own company. That's called prote after I left MIT Okay, so that's your education and job so what I recommend is not you pose a video and You feel that column for yourself. So feel all the education and job first off So when you're done, please play again good so now you have your education and job up to today and The point here is maybe Well, maybe there's some things that you want to change about your job And so we're going to use all the other things and the next column to feed that that information So let's continue about what's the most straightforward and doesn't require too much like self introspection and there will be well the places you've you've been living or or or you've been traveling so in my case I was born in the South of France in Bayonne and then we moved to Samaloo Which is in Brittany and because my father is Japanese. I I also had some education in Japan and We moved to Paris then Where I studied, you know my undergrad and when I was a student I was I was very keen on traveling so I did many trips in mostly around Europe and Then I went to get my master's degree like I was saying before the RCA in London and Then so actually I used for the first time this graphic method as my CV When I applied for my master's degree and it worked I got in and so the reason I got in it's because with this method You can show all the stuff that you that you like or the places you've been in a very Synthetic way so people they don't need to read through a boring CV. They can just look at one image and they get Kind of what you made of or how you became to be that that person anyway, so After I moved to Nairobi and moved to and worked in in Kenya for a bit then I moved to Boston to work at MIT and Then I moved to New Orleans to work on the BP oil spill and that's when I started my my company Which is called prote we're building a selling robots and then I kept doing the same company and moved around around many places and Actually, I served around the world with unreasonable at sea which is in the business incubator that was located on a ship So we were sailing around the world as as we were going and now I live in Hong Kong and Shenzhen since Seven months, and that's where I developed my business. So that's that's it for the location and Places where I've been living and places where I've traveled or that have been important for me So I encourage you to pause the video again now and To pick up later to fill in the rest Okay, so the next I suggest feeling would be passions So I was born by the ocean and I also moved to the seaside to Samaloo when I was a kid And I love singing that was just just happens to be what my parents put me through a choir and then I love to do some martial arts and because of my proximity to the sea I started sailing and Then I was interested in the arts. I mean for music more into like plastic arts as in drawing and painting and building architecture models and And so then because I like I said I went to the Colboum It's a craft school and I was really super keen on cycling and and so I developed an interest in mechanics and later in electronics and coding and so that's what led me to do this master degree in interactive design and And right now my passion and my job really are You know converging and into becoming like a work as as a passion And that's the whole point of this of this work that that we're doing now is to see how you could basically combine the things that you love doing and You know make a living out of this and how do you make this happen? Okay, so again I encourage you now to pause the video and to fill in all your passions and the things that That you've been really super keen on they can be you know like official extra curricular activities I don't know I could be sports or it could be art or it could be you know a very special hobby I don't fishing it could be Your passion could be about I don't know anything geeky anything that that made you who you are Okay, now you can pause and fill in Okay So the next is about the people so maybe your passions Or the location or your job have been strongly influenced by the people you've met So in my case as a child I was born in the south of France Even though like my French family is from the north of France and so the people who gave me my first name Which is Spanish is I mean it's Basque It's Clemore and Mamita. It's it's very an old couple and they were really amazing amazingly kind people even though they are not my logical parents. They acted as such and Oh, sorry and the next person that was influential to me is when we moved to to Paris There was an old guy that was building microscopes in my street And he was he was a kind of the new figure for my grandfather because my grandfather was so far away And so he was very important for me and well these are not people like MIT Press is not people and Wikipedia is not people but they are reasoned by people and so some of them were alive Some of them were dead, but nevertheless they have been extremely influential on me and and on my my further career Then there was this old another old man that was very important for me. His name is Nathan Prasovnik and He survived the death camps and he wrote a book that he he asked me to read and that was also very influential on my on my life path and then of course Relationships my first girlfriend My father actually I didn't get to talk to for a very long time, you know family members Philosophers artists like anybody you want to put in people like anybody that was really influential to you And more recently, it's my co-worker. Her name is Gabrielle Levine and we started a bit business together And she's been a constant inspiration for me so you want to Pause after after I said maybe a few more words So in in people it can be like I'm saying like alive people so could be a family could be your friends could be your co-workers could could be a Professor or it could be some poets or some artist that just a personality is that that had a Life stories that had a strong influence on you They can pose good so, oh, yeah, most recently Tom she was a very strong influence on me and so you can see that all of that stuff that I've done in my education my passion and the people I've met I Kind of converge to feed what I'm doing right now, which is prote they are autonomous sailing robots and and I feel very very satisfied with this this job right now because because I'm my own boss and It combines all the stuff I love it combines sailing it combines traveling it combines meeting a lot of interesting inspiring people and And it's good for the environment and so so that that's really where all all the stuff I love kind of converging and so the question is Is here is now what now you filled all your top of your half of your page and You're like, okay. I can see that's my that's what I've done in my life in the past, but how can I appreciate further? So just here I just want to take a little break and and and don't want to sound harsh but you will die and the one that you love will also die and so before the people that you love die you may want to spend some time with them and There are many places you might be dreaming of going many things that that you want to do and and and so Yeah, you only have one life and so Now you see your life in the palm of your hand on this half half sheet of paper That's pretty amazing What are you going to? You know Go through this line that is now Think of the line in the center of the page as a kind of a filter There are things that you have done in the past That you want to keep doing and some of the stuff that you've done in the past You just want to stop you don't you don't need some of some of the activities There are some people in in your future and that some people that are really influential to you And are still alive and you and you never had the courage to get in touch with them why why You have to call you have to call get on the phone and and give this important phone call that that has been waiting for maybe a Decade and and I don't know this author or this artist or or This this girl or this guy that that you're secretly in love with like it's it's more than time It that's a long overdue or a simple location You've been dreaming of going to that places like what keeps you from doing it So again, I'm just going to use my my personal life So I have a company right now and I know I want to keep it I want to keep doing it for for good a good amount of time for the next years to come And I know that what I really need to find is a good business and work and R&D partner And I also aspire to start my own family So I'm turning I just turned 30 and I feel like I'm feeling more and more ready to start my own family And about the location where I am today Hong Kong and Shenzhen. I I feel very happy here So I want to stay here for for a while Then I had this crazy dream when I was a student that was actually my my diploma project Which is to build the International Ocean Station. It's like the space station, but for it's for the oceans and That sounds really crazy. I guess too too too too many people or crazy ambitious But I will I will comment on that afterwards and my long-term project is to Create a better relationship between the economy financial economy and the environmental economy so environmental systems and to create something I call liquid economy and Because Africa is going to be industrialized then I think I think I'm not sure But I have the feeling that I will have to be in Africa When I get older just because of the nature of the business. I'm doing so that's just a feeling so the idea here is that So I'm going again like now you're going to post a video and This time really take your time like there's no going from like location first or Job first or passion first like this. I have no advice in this This is really your your little cooking and you do it. You have to do it your own way So, yeah post the video and take take your time to think What you want to keep from your past and what you want to bring forward that that's important for you for you So you can post video now okay So what I really want to say as a comment is that you know saying the international ocean station That's not like a really crazy ambitious thing and that's okay, and you know the plan will change and what's important with making this kind of like ground or super long-term plan is Not to follow this plan like step-by-step because because it will change But but what it brings you is that it brings you some clarity about the person that you have been in a person that you are now and The person you want to be and that can give you some confidence into making this important life decisions and And for me it has helped me to become a better person for for myself to understand myself better And to be more clear in how I interact with other people and hopefully No, do projects that are coherent with with what I what I'm passionate about and that that can have a positive impact on the world Also what I have to add as a comment is You may have grand project or a humble project. Maybe it matters less Certainly if you succeed in those projects, it matters less than actually if you know that what what you're pursuing is not I don't know getting rich for example, but but you know fighting for a cause a cause that that you think is worthwhile and And so that that makes you Feel more comfortable About you know, what is success of failure to you because you know that you are you're contributing to society for for for something That's maybe hopefully bigger than yourself and the next slide. Yes Sorry, so the idea is that you you it's a this is like a you know like like a business plan for for for a company It's like you make business plans or you can make like a life plan, but of course it's going to change So what I suggest is that you don't spend a lot of time working on this is that you just spend half an hour You know like drawing your pasts or the last few important things in your couple of last years and then you you draft Something and then you do it over and over again every time you feel that you have some doubts About the directions you want to take or if you need more clarity about short medium or long term you can use this very simple and and free method just just a pen and a paper and Now I think that's maybe the most important part of the of the presentation But what I've tried to show you to show you right now is that your life is a network of event as in events as in People locations or jobs or or relationships or like people that that that you've met and we are all you know These complex networks of feelings and experience and stories and so is everybody else and so You can connect with other people By for example like what they have what they're passionate about or by the location or just who they are and And so the idea is that if you if you're dreaming alone It's only a dream, but if you dream with other people it becomes a reality And so what I what I would love is to if you guys on YouTube could you know Do this exercise for yourself and and share it if you can put in the comment You know some links to some to any a picture a photograph of or screen capture of of your of your life drawing then I think it would be very inspirational for others and Yeah, and it will encourage others to you know to do the same and and study feel altogether confident about our aspirations So the just just to wrap it up the idea is to one step one is to draw your past understand where you're standing in the present and You know choose what you're gonna be making for the rest of your of your life That's that one is to connect to yourself connect your life events The second step is to connect to others So it means once you acquire this clarity then you can you know connect to other people and and because you know what you want then Like everything becomes so much more clear and then you don't you know raise expectation that that you cannot meet with other people or or It just makes maybe your life simpler and you feel you feel more comfortable And the third is that if you if you find people that that have the same dreams and aspiration Well, then you may actually want to do this exercise Collaboratively as in you could see how your life goes Correspond to other people's life goals So I would say that I use this method for personal development But you can also use this for you know company development for example like you you want to see you want to check if your Co-workers have the same objective in personal development and the company development Or you could use that in your in your personal relationship with your with your wife here or all your kids What what what do the members in your family want? If you're going to spend your life together So so I just showed you how to do it with a pen and pencil or do it on the Google Google join But there are more I would say advanced way to do that if you if you want to add More detail so for example if you're working just with with paper and a tangible way You can use paper and pencil and eraser, which we which is what you might have done the first time But next time or if you don't want to have to draw it all over again You could just work on post-its so you could work on stickies or on dry erase board or with magnets or or pins The second is that you could work it work on it online and collaboratively So I've been doing that a lot because I I work in open source hardware development and so You know it helps us to make sure that we have the same objectives over time and another really great software is called Prezi and Prezi allows you to zoom in to like incredible Small level so you could add a ton of content and you would still be Digestible and you would be able to see what matters to you by just writing You know like letters or important things in big letters and less important things in small letters So that's for the people who wants to have like a very comprehensive map over there of the life MindMeister is a quick diagram Software and Asana and stuck and if you combine it with instagant So that's more like team and project management, and they are very intuitive ways of Managing your tasks day-to-day and brainstorming to develop a project and to kill tasks And you could lay them in a gantt chart if you combine Asana instagant so we use that in our company to To you know develop to brainstorm and develop milestones and you know and look look back at what we've done and Be effective and in collaboration and then of course you can work offline on vector software like Illustrator or InScape Pages for Mac or Microsoft world or Omnigrafo again, that's more Mac oriented software so I hope this presentation was helpful for you and That you have a better grasp now of your past your present and and maybe Got more insight of what you want to do for for your future This presentation is online, so you can leave comments on under the YouTube video in the comments on YouTube or you could go on this link and You could leave comments on on each of the slides if you have suggestions of how I could improve it and Well, thank you very much. I prefer if you send me Comments on on YouTube not not by personal email, but that's my website there and I will and also in the comments There is all the links to all the softwares that are that I mentioned Yeah, thank you very much for watching