Comment by turnsout

The problem with this kind of detailed long-term planning is that you won’t possibly be able to reverse engineer the exact path you’re going to take. And if you get too attached to your bullet points, lists, charts and graphs, you don’t know how to react when you hit a snag or a fork in the road.

When that bump comes, people often abandon the whole plan. So the trouble with goals is that the good (getting you motivated to act) is often outweighed by the bad (draining motivation when the arbitrary goal is not met).

What you really want, in hn-friendly language, is not a 2D point on a map, but a vector. You want to know the general direction that you want to move toward in your life, and then start increasing your velocity.

A point is something you have reached or not (hint: it’s not even satisfying when you hit it). But you can change your vector on a dime. Even if you’re nowhere near your dream life, even in terrible times, you can always instantly pivot and vector in the right direction.

If it makes you feel good, make the big plans and be as detailed as you please. But hold them lightly. And just get moving along your vector.