Section 8: Planning Your Future
What do you want your life to look like in 12 months?
In this exercise, you’ll create annual milestones to monitor progress toward your dream life.
In the last section you clarified what you want each area of your future life to look like. Additionally, you described in detail what your overall life will look like at a point 3-5 years in the future.
In this section, you’ll complete a similar exercise to determine the 12-month milestones you need to reach to make your bigger vision a reality.
Exercise: Your 12-Month Milestones
Thinking about your life 12 months from now, describe in as much detail as possible what that looks like.
Where you you work?
Where do you live?
Who do you live with?
What do you do for fun?
What does your daily routine look like?
It’s helpful to have your answers from the previous exercise nearby as you go through this exercise.
You likely won’t achieve every goal from your bigger vision in the next 12 months, but you should be much closer to them than you are today.
What milestones you can reach in 12 months that:
Provide feedback you’re on the right track
Keep you motivated
As an example, imagine part of your big picture vision is to complete graduate school in the next 3 years.
Your 12-month milestones for this might include applying to schools, being accepted, and completing your first 6 courses with a 3.0 GPA or higher.
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As your timeline shortens from 3-5 years to 12 months, the actions needed to accomplish your big goals should become clearer. You're breaking down a big, audacious goal into more manageable pieces.
Just like your big picture vision, your 12-month milestones should be reviewed every few months to document progress. Are you behind in certain areas? Ahead in others? Keeping it top of mind allows you to make adjustments to stay on track.