How important is winning to you? I know I like to win. What’s even more important is how I play the game. The process is key to me.

For many leaders today, life is moving really fast. Contemplating the process of life is not on the top of many leaders “to do” lists. Yet, process is vital in order to do life well and to finish well. To me finishing well implies much more than just a successful career or ministry. How important is life’s process to you?

Recently, I attended the The SCORRE Conference, formerly called The Dynamic Communicators Workshop, in Vail, Colorado. It is absolutely the best training available for speakers and everyone else who wants to communicate with more clarity and power. (I liked it so much the first time I attended that I am now a partner with Ken Davis, the founder and primary instructor.)

In the last session of the conference, we heard from speaking coach and master communicator, Stacey Foster. He closed his talk with this powerful story:*

Over the course of my life, I have worked with a lot of planners. As a corporate executive, I worked with strategic planners. As a speaker, I work with event planners. And, as the father of five daughters, I’ve worked with my share of wedding planners.

But I have met very few life planners—people who have a written plan for their lives.

Several months ago, I published an ebook called Creating Your Personal Life Plan. I made it available as a free PDF download for readers who subscribed to my blog via email. So far more than 30,000 people have done so.

However, I have had numerous requests to make the book available in Kindle, Nook, and iBook formats. Unfortunately, the original landscape cover didn’t convert well to portrait. This has required me to reformat the ebook.

A few weeks ago, I spoke at the Building Champions Experience. I spoke on the topic of “Making a Greater Difference Outside the Office.” I specifically focused on how the discipline of life planning had made that possible for me.

Note: I originally learned about life planning in 2001 from Daniel Harkavy. He is the CEO and founder of Building Champions and the author of Becoming a Coaching Leader: The Proven Strategy for Building Your Own Team of Champions.

At the risk of wearing you out, I want to ask for your input on this cover one last time. More than 750 people voted on the four covers I posted earlier today. They left almost 300 comments. I read through every single one. They have helped me clarify my own thinking and will influence the outcome.

The top two choices were very close: The GPS Cover took 40 percent of the votes. The Sail Cover took 30 percent. I also polled people as to their gender and then cross-tabbed the results. The results were almost identical for the GPS Cover. Men and women voted the same. However, among women the Sail Cover and the Tree Cover tied for second place.

On Thursday, I posted the first round of new cover designs for Creating Your Personal Life Plan. Some 750 people took the survey. Even better, sixty people left detailed comments, telling me what they liked and disliked.

I have taken all that input into consideration, and would like to get your vote on this second round of book cover comps. If you want to get straight to the survey, just scroll down this page and take it. It will take you less than 60 seconds.

Last week, I did a teleseminar for a group of 150 financial advisors. We talked about the importance of creating a written life plan.

Even though these professionals routinely create financial plans for their clients, most had never considered creating a life plan for themselves. It was a new idea. They wanted to know why I thought this was important.

I am excited about the upcoming Building Champions Experience, September 13–16, 2011 in Cle Elum, Washington. This will be my third year in a row to attend. I look forward to it every year. It is unlike any other conference I attend.

As you may know, Building Champions is the premier coaching company in the U.S. I have used them for more than a decade. They have coached me, several Thomas Nelson executives, and facilitated much of our strategic planning. I honestly would not be where I am today apart from their influence in my life.

If you have followed my blog for more than a few months, you know that I am a huge fan of Don Miller and, especially, his most recent book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: How I Learned to Live a Better Story. In fact, I recently had the men in my Mentoring Group read through the book and discuss it. It is life-changing.

That’s why I am so excited to share with you about Don’s Storyline Conference. This is a two-day event held in Portland, Oregon on June 6–7. Don designed this conference to help you examine your life—who you are and who God created you to be—and then guide you through the process of creating a more meaningful story.

You have a choice in life. You can either live on-purpose, according to a plan you’ve set. Or you can live by accident, reacting to the demands of others. The first approach is proactive; the second reactive.

Sure, you can’t plan for everything. Things happen that you can’t anticipate. But it is a whole lot easier to accomplish what matters most when you are proactive and begin with the end in mind.

Since publishing my new e-book, Creating Your Personal Life Plan, I have had several people ask how I created the e-book. Rather than try to answer these questions individually, I thought I would document the process here. You might want to try something similar.

I first did this when I published my two previous e-books, Writing a Winning Non-Fiction Book Proposal and Writing a Winning Fiction Book Proposal. I used the same basic approach here.

If you are working more than fifty-five hours a week, you are working too much and likely out of balance. You may be able to work more than this for a season, but it is not sustainable. If you persist in working this much—or more—something will eventually break.

When I first began my publishing career, I was determined to succeed. Part of what drove me was fear. I didn’t have any experience, and I was scared to death I would be found out.

I am excited to announce the publication of my new e-book, Creating Your Personal Life Plan. This has been several months in the making. I am pleased to unveil it today. In a minute, I’ll tell you how to get a copy FREE—for a limited time.

As you may know, I wrote a blog post on this topic about three years ago. It is still the single most popular post on my blog. In fact, if you Google the words “life plan,” that original post is the top result.

Last week, Gail and I attended the Building Champions Experience in Sunriver, Oregon. One component of the conference was focused on creating a life plan. I first did this about eight years ago, but it was Gail’s first time through. We began by visualizing our own funeral.

I realize that this may sound morbid, but it is incredibly helpful. In the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen Covey exhorts us to “begin with the end in mind.” Starting with your own funeral is the ultimate form of this.

I have met very few people who have a plan for their lives. Most are passive spectators, watching their lives unfold a day at a time. They may plan their careers, the building of a new home, or even a vacation. But it never occurs to them to plan their life. As a result, many end up discouraged and disillusioned, wondering where they went wrong.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. You can live your life on purpose. It begins by creating a “Life Plan.” This won’t insulate you from life’s many adversities and unexpected twists and turns, but it will help you become an active participant in your life, intentionally shaping your own future.