Long Term Goals

I have become obsessed with the idea of long term goals. Like REALLY long term.

Five years. Ten Years. Twenty Years. A Career. A Lifetime

I used to be drawn to 30 day challenges or those posts where somebody said “I did _____ for a year and here’s what happened.” I liked the idea of the overnight success. New Year’s plans and goals were my favorite. I wanted that quick win.

Then something started to change. My New Year’s plans and goals started to look an awful lot alike year after year. I wanted to be healthy, to travel, to make career progress, to save more money for retirement and once I had my son, I wanted to be a good mom.

It wasn’t the jaded sort of ‘the same’ that people like to portray with New Year’s Resolutions. I wasn’t joining a gym every January 1st just to have quit going by the 5th. It’s just that “being healthy” is not something you do one year and cross of your bucket list for the rest of your life. It’s something you have to keep working on.

I also often take time around the New Year to look back at the year before. When I actually tally up what the year held – my progress for the year, my adventures, my connections, my accomplishments – I often find that it’s both more rich and full than than I might have thought and that in other ways progress has been slow.

Something else has happened now that I’ve reached my mid-thirties. I can appreciate how much progress I’ve made on things on longer time scales that would have been impossible to accomplish in a year.

You gain REAL experience when you’ve been working for 20 years. Things change in your financial picture if you keep track of all of your expenses for 10+ years. It’s really, really hard to suddenly have a retirement account in 30 days. But give it 3,000 days and that’s a different story.

Certain quotes and ideas show up again and again. I try to learn from other people, to gain insights by listening and watching instead of having to learn the hard way. One quote that has stuck with me is the following:

It takes 10 years to become an overnight success.

I have started expecting slower progress. I’ve started having more patience for long term goals. I’ve come to appreciate that it takes a lot more time, but it also pays off. It’s worth it.

I started my own web development business just over three years ago. A business is one of those things that does not become successful overnight. It takes time. A lot of time. Even before I started my business, I spent years and year working, gaining the skills and experience I needed to be able to start a business.

Three years can feel like a long time for some things, but to me, my business is still new. It’s barely past being a toddler. So I keep my expectations in line. I keep working towards what I envision it being at year five or year ten. I focus on the processes I need to get there while knowing that the results just need time. Lots of time.

Already though I can say that my business at year three is much different than my business a year or two ago. I have learned so much. I have been able to implement so many processes to make things work better. I have more clients. I work to improve a little most days and that adds up over time.

I’m excited to see where my business is in another year, in five years, ten years.

One of the things that is so satisfying about having one’s own business is that the growth of it is so personal. Wins are personal. It can be hard as hell. Those early years when the business isn’t making any money and the people around you think you’re crazy are brutal. All of the problems are your problem. But at the end of the day you get to feel like you’re building something for your future. You’re not just working to make somebody else rich.

I bring this up because I think one of the important thing about long term goals is having long term goals that matter. You can’t just make a long term goal and have it stick if it’s not actually important to you. You can’t fake it. It takes too much work, energy, patience.

It can be hard to wrap one’s head around the bigger questions. What are my career goals? What do I actually want to accomplish in my life?

But I’ve been asking that question lately. What if I started some 20 year goals or 30 year goals or 40 year goals or lifetime goals? What could I accomplish? What would I do? What is important to me?

It’s hard to settle on one thing or a handful of things. To accept the nature of life – that picking things means other things won’t happen. But not picking means I’ll probably just waste my time not accomplishing any big goals. Or accomplishing things by accident. Spending time in a career I didn’t pick. Doing things mindlessly.

What if I thought more about the future? What if I planted those trees I wished I planted 5 years ago when we moved into our house?

What if I took a step back, planned just a little more, took advantage of time? Let the days add up to work in my favor?