All of us have our plans for the future, no matter how ephemeral or vague they might be. It’s important, for example, to have something of a positive ideal of what you’d like life to look like 3-5 years from now, because while that does seem far a way, it’s not so far away to be out of the question for positive planning.
Yet one of the toughest parts of planning is transitioning your ideas from the ‘ideal’ stage to the ‘actual’ stage. For instance, we might wish to run a marathon in around eighteen months, but planning the week-in, week-out training sessions you wish to keep up with and what your diet will be takes time, energy, and enthusiasm to get right.
For that reason, we hope to give you some healthy advice for planning more realistic targets, keeping in mind all of your responsibilities, and helping you realize a positive path forward as necessary. With that in mind, your planning should not only lead to an outcome right for you, but a pursuit process that’s right for you as well. Let’s consider:
Achievable Targets
No plan can stand the test of time if you fail to split it up into small chunks of tasks and deadlines to follow. Yet in order to achieve that plan, you need to make sure that these tasks are actually achievable, and that you can rely on yourself to complete them.
For instance, our previous example of running a marathon can seem quite impressive on the surface, particularly if you’ve never run this distance before. But training for the run three times a week, slowly increasing your gradual distance to the point where a year and some months from now, that kind of increase is achievable, can be very helpful.
But of course, each sessions you pen in your calendar must be carefully curated to help your running ability, allowing you to take on this demand as necessary, and also allowing for weeks when you seemingly struggle to progress at all, rather than planning so that every session needs to be a resounding success. Training for anything isn’t a linear process, after all. Giving yourself this room can help you progress with care, and with the mental focus you gain when giving yourself room to maneuver.
Realistic Timing
Deadlines are important to consider, but if they’re too constricting, then you may find that you’re unhappy focusing on your goals as keeping up with that and everything else you have to deal with could be a pain.
For instance, if you’re a parent hoping to achieve a degree online despite having a family to look after, it might be that taking a three-year version of a course rather than a jam-packed two-year course could be more appropriate.
It’s okay to need a little more time to complete your goals. If you want to compete in an amateur sporting event, but you have a little bit of weight to lose before you start seriously training, then giving yourself time for that can be a great idea too.
Most of us are skilled at some things and less skilled at others. It might be, then, that some of your natural talents can help you fly through certain tasks on your goal-setting journey, meaning that you can adjust the timeline of completion as necessary. Sometimes realistically considering your talents can be beneficial, rather than unhelpful.
Doing Our Research
Doing our research can help us avoid flying blind when it comes to planning a certain life outcome. For instance, perhaps you’ve fallen in love with someone who lives abroad. You are starting to get serious, to the point where planning your life together is seemingly becoming more and more of an eventuality.
Yet of course, getting together in a relationship isn’t as simple when you don’t share a nationality or country. This is where understanding how to move forward by researching the process of a Green Card Marriage and the legal help that can abet this will help you make those plans more readily, keeping mind the requirements you need to meet before these plans can go ahead.
Now you’ve done your due diligence, you know what challenges (not obstacles), you need to consider before everything else. That can help you avoid a nasty shock later when exterior timelines don’t quite adapt to your own desires.
Knowing The Investment
Making goals and targets means, usually, aiming for a point in life which is considered superior and more favorable to where you are now. For this reason, it helps to know the investment you’re going to be making.
If you hope to leave your job and start your own business this time next year, for example, how much in savings will you need by then? How can you start thinking about your branding? How can you curate your unique selling point to the point where you know and understand how to progress? What will your target market be, and how many hours will you work now that your schedule is only dictated by your own ambition?
Being realistic about how much work something will take, and then making concessions for if it takes more time than this to achieve, you can more readily move forward with a responsible understanding of what your goals will take. We all tend to overestimate how qualified we are and underestimate how difficult or how much investment big tasks in life can take - don’t do this, and if anything, you’ll surprise yourself for the better, rather than encountering a nasty shock.
With this advice, we hope you can set more realistic targets and goals for the future. With that in mind, you’re much more likely to achieve them. Yet remember, if one plan doesn’t quite work out, you can always adjust it, or try again. You have time, and provided you don’t lose your faith, almost anything is possible.
We wish you the best of luck in your pursuits.
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