Right now I’m blogging about being in debt (though I’m not being openly honest with my readers about this debt) and not being able to find work and being a recent college grad.

Thanks for sharing your stories and I found this statement to be too true for my life. What do you think about long-term goals. I feel like when I set long-term goals, they end up changing a lot as my situation changes because I am in such a state of limbo right now. I’ve almost given up making plans all together.

If you don’t have a “clear and easy to reach” destination in mind, you will always get lost. That is why the concept of “Baby Steps” works.

I had three distinct goals just before our second child was born (larger home, trip to Australia, pay off the mortgage) and assigned a time frame for each (5, 10, 15 years). With the goal and plan set, I put all my energy into that and completed them in 2, 11 and 9 years. Turns out mortgage and trip got switched because once the mortgage started to get smaller, I didn’t want to stop the momentum and then it turned out we could combine the trip with a business trip so the cost was way lower making that goal more achievable.

There are times when I can’t come up with a plan for a dream so in that case I just file it away in a “dreams” file folder and cease to give it any of my thought energy. Occasionally, I’ll go through that folder and see if any dreams need to be updated to goals and to enjoy seeing how I’ve matured as a person.

Interestingly, 10 years ago, I put an article on a specific car in the the dream file and forgot about it. Three years ago we had an opportunity to drive in the car and fell in love with it, so tried to turn it into a goal (but failed, the manufacturer hasn’t brought it to North America) so it remains in limbo. But I had no recollection of learning about the car 10 years ago so when I discovered that fact, it renewed our interest in turning this dream into a goal.

(I’m far too practical to import the car because we have no mechanical skills whatsoever so couldn’t keep it on the road ourselves and the dealers for that manufacturer in Canada have no interest in doing it for us.)

The downside to achieving goals so easily is that once you have all that you were working towards, how do you come up with more goals?

I have one educational one but aside from that I’m just floating along and feel slightly adrift. And my body is showing that so it is obviously time to get a good goal for my health.

But like you, I used to have lots of abstract goals that don’t really have distinct “ends” in mind. And you are absolutely right that when you DO have a specific goal, it’s much easier to work towards it.

Might as well throw out an end myself – put together a final resume and find 10 companies I really want to work for. I’m at the internship stage, but “find an internship” might be an end, but too abstract to work towards. It’s easier to reach immediate steps that have recognizable and foreseeable ends.

John DeFlumeri Jr

Thanks for the reminder how important it is for personal goals as well.