00181 Life Inventory Questions (the Basics)

You can see a lot by just looking. — Yogi Berra

These questions relate to the basics of who and where you are. Each section has an inventory document with further questions relating to the topic of the section. The numbering system starts with the number of the section.

Good observation lays the foundation for excellent design. Poor observation is the precursor of bad design. If you don’t know where you are and where you want to be, you can’t know the way to get there. If by some random chance you arrive somewhere, you won’t know where you are.

So you need to come to some understanding with yourself and your immediate household/family regarding who you are and where you want to go. With this info, you can design a way to get where you want to go.

Start a word processing or spreadsheet document for your answers. Copy these questions and paste them there and fill them in as you develop the information.

If you don’t find this kind of inventory useful for your situation, that’s fine. Develop some other way to do a detailed observation of your life.

Your basic information

Who are you at this moment in your history?

  • Name
  • Address
  • Work and/or school
  • Attained education
  • Annual income
  • Source(s) of income
  • Job skills (related to your work)
  • Life skills (related to life, make it as extensive a list as you can — e.g. as simple as balancing your checkbook, as complex as a knowledge of Renaissance music)
  • What is your purpose in life?
  • Who are your heroes/heroines?

You in your household

  • Family or roommates, housemates or significant other(s)
  • Their work and/or school status
  • Their attained education
  • Their income(s)
  • Their income source(s)
  • Their job skills
  • Their life skills
  • Their permaculture skills
  • Roles that everyone plays in the household.
  • Is your present household temporary (roommates and such who come and go)? Or is it a long-term/permanent family arrangement?
  • Who do you have commitments to?
  • What kind of commitments do you have?

You and your family of origin

  • List your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, and the places they lived (as much as you can). If you can go further back, that’s all to the good.
  • List your aunts, uncles, and cousins (the purpose of these two lists is to visualize your extended biological family).

You and your geography

  • What is your ecological region? (A/k/a your bioregion.)
  • What is this ecological place in the geography of your life? That is, what are the neighboring bio-regions? What political boundaries divide and unite your area?
  • What are the characteristics of your area? More detail is better than less.
  • How long have you lived here?
  • How long do you expect to live here?
  • If you plan to leave, where will you go?
  • What is your climate? You need, in all cases, at least 10 years of climate data that includes monthly records of maximum and minimum temperatures, amount and type of precipitation. Average temperatures and rainfall amounts are not useful. More years are better than less. Somewhere you can probably find a 100 year record of droughts and floods. Find it and use it!

You and your future

  • What are your goals for your life?
  • How will you achieve those goals?

If you are in school. . .

  • What are your plans for after you leave school?
  • Do you have a plan for a career?
  • How long will you remain in school?
  • Do you like your school?
  • Will you have a large student debt when you leave school?
  • What are your job prospects post-college?

If you already are out of school and have a career . . .

  • Do you plan to pursue this same career until you retire?
  • Do you like this career? If so, why? If not, why? If not, what do you plan to do about the unhappiness with your career choice?

If you don’t have a career, but do have a job. . .

  • Do you like this job?
  • Why do you like it?
  • If you don’t like it, why do you dislike it?
  • How long do you plan to keep this present job?
  • If you don’t like this job, what are your plans for finding another job?
  • Do you need more education or skill training to get another job?

Longer-term issues

The younger you are, the harder it will be to answer these next few questions. The older you are, the more important these questions become.

  • What are your plans for retirement? — Where will you live during retirement?
  • How much will it cost your to live?
  • What income will you have during retirement?
  • If you do not plan to retire, will your work change as you grow older?

You in the present situation

  • How do the four threats of political criminality, economic irrationality, climate instability, and peak energy impact you?
  • How will those impacts change as the situation unfolds and evolves?

Additional Useful Information

Your written observations include lists —

  • resources available,
  • resources needed,
  • functions needed (food, water, shelter, etc.)
  • any particular problems, challenges or hazards,
  • your skills, knowledge, and abilities and of others who are part of your life,
  • your desires and goals for the future,
  • the impacts of the invisible structures of government and community on you and your life.
  • limiting factors (anything that may be a problem in realizing your goals and dreams)

If you have land that goes with your dwelling or business, a PASTE list may be useful —

  • Plants
  • Animals
  • Structures and Soils
  • Tools/Resources
  • Events

Goals

  • What are your short-term goals (up to one year)?
  • What are your medium term goals (one to five years)?
  • What are your longer term goals (five years and more)?
  • What goals do you have for your study of permaculture design?

When you think of goals, don’t be afraid to set “SMART” goals. These are:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Relevant
  • Timely

Maps

Maps are a necessity in permaculture design — although we know that “the map is not the territory.” It is a map maker’s interpretation of the territory. Maps need to clearly indicate existing features of a community or a particular part of that community.

Overlays can be used to show proposed changes in the geographies of your life and/or the sites of your life.

Since the object of our design work is your own life, you need to a map of your life. This could be a diagram with you at the center. Use the Simple Critical Infrastructure Map system described in section 9 to describe the various layers of infrastructure that protect you from the six ways to die, which are illness, injury, heat, cold, hunger, and thirst. Shelter protects us from heat and cold; Supply protects us from hunger and thirst, and Safety shields us from illness and injury. These three sets of essential services operate on seven layers of infrastructure:

  • person/individual,
  • household,
  • community (village/neighborhood),
  • town,
  • region,
  • country,
  • world.

More is better than less.

The more you can know yourself — and describe that on paper — the better your ultimate design will be. Please resist the temptation to rush through this. We don’t have time to be in a hurry, so take your time and linger over your observations. One possible exercise is to interview others about you, as if you were a third party reporter doing a story about your life.