Moving from being clueless to goals with a vision
One day in 2015, I was sitting in Cafetaria in my office talking to someone. He asked me a simple question “Hey Aseem, so what have you learnt in the last few months?”. I couldn’t answer the question as I wasn’t sure. That realization was horrifying for me. You might be thinking “What’s so horrifying in that”? I am glad you thought that. Let me explain.
When I started my career I had dreams that I would get great opportunities and do amazing things. We started out with a training program. One day in evening HR came and told me that I am getting assigned to some work. As I was listening to it I was thinking what the hell. It was to a department that nobody wanted to get into. There was a joke in our training batch that if you don’t do well they will send you to that department. I left office after some time. As I was walking back home I was thinking “If they give me good work then great. If they don’t I will do my own projects after office and make sure I keep on learning. I will NOT lack in my learning.” I kept to that promise as long as I was in the department.
Then I switched jobs and got a better place. After few months when I had settled down I was still learning. But I didn’t a have a particular direction in mind. I was learning anything and everything. But as it all random I was not moving forward a lot in particular direction.
I decided to sit down and give myself a direction. I wrote a 2 year vision. A guidepost which will told me the direction I need to go in for the next 2 years. That was Sept’ 2015. More than 2 years have passed since then. To achieve that vision I tried bunch of stuff that you can find in articles related to productivity
- breaking it down into bullet points and trying to work on all of them
- breaking them down into quarterly goals
- breaking them down into monthly goals
- putting them in calendar
- pomodoro timers etc.
I learnt a few things
Serious about planning + Keep plan in your head -> Brain Explosion
Usually when we keep things in our head it becomes difficult to manage them. If there is anything that is bothering you it will use up your brain. Everything else will be lost. Write your wish list down.
I have had times when I wanted to plan. But I was not writing it down. It felt like my head is going to explode soon enough.
Starting Wish list + Expect Perfection = Impossible
Because you are writing everything down it will be a mess. You will have to sort it out. Sorting needs to be done on a continuous basis. Monthly, quarterly — you need to figure out what works for you.
Wish list = changing with time
Any day if I find something is using up my brain I write it down in my wish list. I know that I will review my wish list and then I can decide what to do with it.
Wish list + Regular reviews -> vision
Over 2 years I slowly decided out of the 17 things that I had written which are more important. That only happened because I regularly reviewed it.
Most of the time impulse decisions are not the best ones. Writing down in wishlist all the time is necessary. But acting on them immediately is not. I have found that if I answer the simple question “Is this what I really want?” a bunch of times over time I get to a answer that usually works out.
Write down a item. For next 21 days answer yourself “Is this what I really want?” every day and write down the answer to that too. At the end of those 21 days you would know whether you really want it.
I have found that doing this brings a lot of clarity in my thoughts.
At end of Sept’17 my 2 year vision time ended. Did I achieve everything that I wrote down in the beginning? No. Did I get a direction? Yes.
This time I wrote a vision for 2018. How did I plan it out this time?
- Keep vision abstract so it can give direction instead of goals. Like focus on health, make more memories. I am able to do this now because I spent last 2 years finding my direction. I won’t suggest anyone to do this when they are starting out.
- Keep vision and wish list separate. Things are picked up from wish list if they support my vision. Other ideas are kept for later.
- Decide on monthly goals that are measurable. Like run for 30 minutes at least 7 days in January.
- Keep your monthly goals flexible. They are there to achieve your vision. Change them if the goals are not helping you move towards your vision
- Keep it simple. Give myself some slack. I don’t want to be productivity freak. I did that at some point in the 2 years. I hated that.
- Make weekly tasks. But do not try to plan out every day. It does not give me enough slack.
Yearly Vision (fixed) -> Monthly Measurable goals (flexible) -> weekly tasks
I think this should work for me. Every person is different. If you have your own system then do share. I would love to know how people find their own direction.
