6 steps to build personal development horizons
To get a grasp of what’s important to you in your work and life, it’s useful to think in terms of horizons, each one progressively further away than the last:
• Ground — Current actions: This is the lowest level horizon you have, comprising your current tasks to be done, reminders, emails to answer, etc.
• Horizon 1 — Current projects: These are the projects on your Projects list at the moment, and they generate most of the items on the ground.
• Horizon 2 — Areas of Focus and Accountabilities: The projects you undertake are based on the accountabilities and roles you have. These are areas where you want to achieve results. At work, these could be things like leadership, strategic planning or market research; at home, they include things like your health, finances, and family. You’ll never “complete” these, but they steer the way you operate. If you realize you have a task that is not represented on your Projects list, you may consider adding a project around it.
• Horizon 3 — One- to two-year goals: Visualize where you want to be in your life in one to two years from now. These goals influence your areas of focus and accountabilities. Attaining a key promotion at work is an excellent example of something that is on this horizon.
• Horizon 4 — Long-term visions: This is the three- to five-year timeframe, where you need to consider not only where you want to be in life, like your long-term career or family aspirations, but also what external factors may influence your life, like technological developments.
• Horizon 5 — Life purpose: This is the ultimate big picture perspective, where you ask yourself why you exist? What is your goal in life? Your answer influences all the previous horizons, and all the tasks you undertake should lead you toward it.
It would seem rational and reasonable to start with your life purpose and work your way down. From there, but in practice, a bottom-up approach tends to work better. It allows you, so you save your creative energy for the more meaningful decisions.
Did you have any thoughts about your situation when you read this? If so, jot them down. Perhaps some of them could go onto your Someday/Maybe list, or you could decide that you want to create a project around more formally thinking about each level, for example, by drafting a plan of your dream life with your partner or by engaging a personal coach to talk about your life goals.
Of course, even after you have these various horizons defined, you still need to review them at appropriate intervals ranging from daily for ground level and annually for backgrounds four to five.
Bonus — 8 useful tools for everyday usage:
Emailoctopus — an email marketing service for users of the cloud-based email-sending service Amazon SES. Its features include app integrations, blog automation, responsive templates, real-time analytics, and more.
Manychat — visual bot builder for Facebook Messenger with broadcasts, analytics, scheduled posting and many other features!
Crello — free graphic design editor that helps create images for social media, print and other web-based graphics.
Funnelytics — the best funnel mapping software available to marketers and entrepreneurs today.
Kinsta — Premium WordPress Hosting for Everyone. Kinsta’s managed WordPress hosting service helps you take care of all your website needs.
Integromat — is a powerful automation tool that connects your apps and services to work smarter, not harder.
Webflow — all-in-one web design tool that allows users to design, build, and launch responsive websites visually.
FlowKit — allows designers to create frighteningly fast user flows within Sketch and Figma.
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