Michael Hyatt in Design Your Life proposes that people live one of three ways.
Drifting: This is when you take life as it comes and just go with the flow. This way results in you ending up in a place you never would have chosen.
Driven: This is when you are hyper-focused on making progress. You become so focused on one area of life to the detriment of other parts. For instance, you may be so focused on developing a business that you spend so much time away from family that you end up losing them. I heard someone say that if you are not driving yourself, but are driven, that you are not pursuing your own dreams.
Neither drifting nor driven are intentional. Both are sides of the same coin. The best is the third way.
Designed: This is when you consciously live intentionally, design a plan for your life and then live by the plan.
You can do all the work to lay out your goals and plan how to achieve what you want, but if you don’t act, if you don’t do something, you still won’t be effective.
What do you want your life to look like? Envision it, lay out the steps to achieve it, and then get started. That is how you can live . . . your life to the fullest.