What Could You Accomplish in the Next Ten Years?

What could you do in the next ten years if you knew you could focus on anything you chose?

Would you learn multiple languages? Get in incredible shape? Build a business? Become a star performer in your field, or invest wisely and retire early? What kind of life could you make for yourself?

We’re not used to thinking in terms of the next decade. For most of us, our horizon of concern is defined by our current problems: getting through the current project at work, graduating from our degree program, responding to daily stresses and frustrations.

The idea of proactively envisioning the next decade can seem overwhelming. But there’s a benefit to thinking longer. Ten years is long enough to accomplish many serious ambitions: truly mastering a skill, building a company from the ground up, reaching the apex of your career, or completely transforming your habits.

What Could You Do in a Decade?

I find it useful, as an exercise, to imagine what I might be able to do in the next ten years. The point of the exercise is not to meticulously or exhaustively plan out the years of your life — even dogged pursuits of a singular ambition usually require more flexibility than that. Instead, the point is to try to remind yourself of what you’re interested in…