§ Tools · Five years, three paths
Three versions of your next five years.
Most people compare their current life against one vague alternative and call it thinking. Write down three instead — then rate each one honestly. The point is not to pick a winner today; it is to see which one you have been quietly avoiding.
Everything here stays in this browser tab. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is saved, and closing the tab erases it.
Keep going
Five years of what you are already doing, played forward honestly — promotions and drift included.
Do you have the money, time, skills and people this needs?
If you started tomorrow, would you back yourself to pull it off?
Does this look like a life you would recognise as yours?
Reading it back, does any part of you lean forward?
Plan B
Your current path becomes impossible tomorrow. Not a disaster — just gone. What do you build instead?
Do you have the money, time, skills and people this needs?
If you started tomorrow, would you back yourself to pull it off?
Does this look like a life you would recognise as yours?
Reading it back, does any part of you lean forward?
The one you don’t say out loud
Money, other people’s opinions, and your resume are not factors. What would you actually do?
Do you have the money, time, skills and people this needs?
If you started tomorrow, would you back yourself to pull it off?
Does this look like a life you would recognise as yours?
Reading it back, does any part of you lean forward?
What you just told yourself
Fill in at least two paths completely and this will compare them.
- Keep going—0/4 rated
- Plan B—0/4 rated
- The one you don’t say out loud—0/4 rated
The only useful next step
Pick the path that surprised you and find the smallest version of it you could test in two weeks — one conversation, one weekend, one draft. Not a decision. A test.
How to get something real out of it
- 1
Write all three before you rate any of them. Rating as you go turns the exercise into a defence of the first one.
- 2
Write in scenes, not job titles. “Running a two-person studio from a small town” beats “entrepreneurship”.
- 3
Rate pull last. It is the one people talk themselves out of, and it is the one that predicts whether you will actually move.
- 4
If a path scores high on resources and low on pull, that is not a plan — that is a habit with a five-year lease.
Questions people ask
- Is this a personality test?
- No. Nothing here classifies you. It is a structured way to write down three futures and compare your own ratings of them — the only data involved is what you type, and it never leaves your browser.
- Why three paths and not two?
- Two paths become a debate you already know the outcome of. The third one — the one you would not say out loud — is where the information is. It rarely gets chosen outright, but it almost always changes how the other two look.
- What if all three come out about the same?
- The tool will say so instead of picking one. Equal ratings usually mean the real deciding factor has not been written down yet — often something like where you want to live, or who you want to be around.
- Do you store what I write?
- No. There is no account, no upload, and no autosave. The text lives in the page while it is open and is gone when you close it.
- Should I decide right after doing this?
- No. The useful output is a two-week test, not a decision. Find the smallest real version of the path that surprised you and try it before you commit to anything.