How to plan long term goals
Long term goals. Some people hear that and are intimidated and some people get excited about it (some even a little too excited, Iβm looking at you, with your 400 goals). Here is a post on how to plan long term goals for you:
Get clear on your goal
You need to get clarity on your existing goal. Why do you want to reach that goal? How do you plan on reaching it? Visualize how it will feel to reach the goal and how it will feel to work on it. Ask yourself if you would want to pursue the goal if you had all the money in the world or if money wasnβt an object. Does the goal help an even bigger life goal of yours? Write all of this down to get the clarity and flow you will need to plan out the rest. Your brain is probably already working really hard right now and you just want to get it out, so letβs start.
Big goal
Write down the big overarching goal that you want to achieve. If it is truly gigantic and consists of multiple big goals that you want to reach write all of them down. This big goal can be a certain income, publishing a book, running a marathon, buying a house. ANYTHING. Iβm mostly gonna go with the example of writing a book because it is the easiest way for me to break this process down for you.
Middle steps
After you wrote out all the giant goals you need to write down the middle goals and steps to reach the bigger goal. In terms of my book example, this would mean things like researching how to write and publish a book, creating characters and a world in case it is fictional, creating character arcs or themes for the 3 main acts and of course: Writing the outline. For a marathon, it could be milestones for how far you can run. For making a bigger income it could be things you want to optimize at work or financially.
Step by Step towards the middle steps
Now you can get into the nitty-gritty stuff. You need actionable and achievable steps towards those middle goals. In the case of the book, it would be going through a list of topics to research, a list of characters and worlds to create and writing chapter-specific outlines bit by bit. For the marathon example, it might be buying the ideal gear, searching tips and finding a way to stay motivated. For the income goal, it might be research into passive income or looking up how to get a promotion the best way.
Stay on track
Now you just need to stay on track and I have the ideal freebie for that: An outline for a weekly review. Sitting down once a week and checking in on my health and goals has helped me a lot with my clarity on goals. Get the Weekly Review Cheat Sheet straight to your inbox by signing up for my newsletter down below:
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How to plan long term goals by Rabea
