4 Key Steps to Creating a Compelling Vision for Your Future And Starting To Go For It

People are slaves to a social system.

If you don't have a vision for your future, society will impose it. From the beginning of your life, you're being taught to have good grades, go to college, and find a stable job without even asking why you need it. Fewer questions - easier for society to create another human gear.

And it's not necessarily bad. We invented this system to maintain our survival. But most people end up living unhappy lives and are sure that everything's alright. Everyone lives like this! 

I'm a society gear myself. I finished my school, then college, then I went to a job under the pressure of university staff. It turned out to be slavery for a whole year. I left my country for political reasons. To survive in a new place I started to leverage my coding skills in a highly stressful game dev job, where I continued to be highly stressed for 5 years already and I'm tired of it.

Life is not simple, right? Even though I do the same things as a society gear, I play this game consciously, have the plan to escape from 9 to 5 and work to it every day. Without exceptions.

Everyone can escape the mechanism of unconscious life support if they want to. We need only to ask questions, answer them for ourselves, and take action based on our reflections.

On your place, I would start with:

1. Defining the future vision

What does your life look like in 20 years? (Remember, we love asking questions here).

Most people will stop at this point. The question is hard! Yes, it's hard, but whether you know what you want for yourself in this life, or it will be decided for you.

Grab something you can write on and ask yourself:

• How do I earn money in 20 years?

• What are my relationships with family and friends?

• Where do I want to live?

• How many hours do I want to work?

Remember, the vision once created won't be your vision until the end of your life. Return to this exercise every quarter to keep your life path updated.

2. Break your vision into goals

You have a written vision, you're already ahead of 95% of people.

Once you have a vision, you need to start achieving it immediately. I mean, you can die tomorrow, don't you want to experience at least a grain of the life that you described for yourself? Plus, progress feels good.

Break down your vision into goals. The bigger, the better. Maybe, after all, you have more than 20 years left.

Do you want to leave your corporate life and get rid of jobs forever? Great! Want a million dollars in your bank account? Nice, big goal! Big goals will spark your imagination and open a fuller picture of possibilities on your path.

3. Link your goals with projects

Achieving every goal starts with a project.

A project is an entity that can be measured and documented.

Brak down your goals into milestones and assign time frames for completing them. It's your measure. And track the activity related to the project. That's how you document it.

I love running. And I want to run for 10 km in one go. This is my project related to the "to have a beautiful body" goal.

I'll use it as an example here:

Goal: To have a beautiful body.

Project: Run 10 km in one go

Milestones: Run 5 km; Run 8 km; Run 10 km;

Log: I have a table storing the information about the speed, distance, and time of every running session.

This way, you have a project to work on, you see your current progress in the log and have a big goal in mind to work on.

4. Make habits out of your projects

You already know what to do, you already know why, and you already know how.

So, the only step we need is action. Nothing will change if you don't act.

The simplest way of starting to make progress in my experience is to start laying down to bed an hour earlier, as a result, wake up an hour earlier, and use this hour to move the needle forward.

Stack this hour with necessary habits that move the needle for you, stick to it for 6 months, and you won't recognize yourself by this time.