The Alternative to New Year’s Resolutions: Personal Annual Review and Plan

Around the holidays, one of the most common questions you hear thrown around is: “what’s your New Year’s resolution?”

For some reason, whenever I hear the responses, I oftentimes have a hard time believing that they will come true. Not because I don’t admire the fact that people resolve to improve themselves, but rather because the resolutions tend to be very vague (what does “become healthier” even mean) and typically lack an actual plan for making them happen.

Recently, I have stumbled across a concept of an Annual Review. Essentially, it’s a document that you put together over the course of a few days and the purpose of it is to deliberately plan for what you want your next year to look like. It starts off by looking at what went well this year, where you failed, what lessons you learned and what you are grateful for. This serves as a foundation to creating a plan for the next year of what you want to accomplish and improve.

Instead of just creating 1-3 “generic” resolutions for the year ahead, you approach this methodically by looking at all areas of life that are important to you. There can be as many or as few as you want – as long as they are things that you want to improve in some way.  For me, they are (in no particular order):

Business & Work
Adventure & Travel
Health
Family & Friends
Romantic Relationships
Learning
Helping Others
Legacy
Financial (Earnings)
Leadership

Once you have the categories defined, the second step is to come up with several goals to go within each “bucket”. It’s important to be specific, so that you know exactly what you expect of yourself and whether you actually reach the goal. “Becoming healthier” is too vague to be useful; while “exercise 5 times per week by March” is something that you can actually hold yourself accountable against.

For each goal, you then create a plan of action and a deadline. Figure out what are the steps that you need to take in order to make it happen and when. They don’t have to go into extreme detail, but you should at least outline the first few steps right away. I also found it really helpful to create a timeline of the year and map out all of the actions and goals against it.

As somebody once said: “you can generally do everything that you want to do, just not at the same time.” – this makes it easier to see how the goals fit against each other and anticipate whether you’ll have time for it. When I did it for 2011, I actually had to remove a few goals due to scheduling issues or because I realized that it would be simply to overwhelming.

Finally, once you’re done setting up the goals and objectives, you want to look at each category and figure out what the theme is or, as I call it, “What’s the Point?” What is it that you will accomplish by fulfilling these goals and why is it important? This exercise helps to figure out the big picture and ensure that your goals are aligned with it. For many people, the “What’s the Point?” step will come first and the goals will follow after, but for me, it works the other way around.

The Next Step

When you complete the document, you’ll have a roadmap for the year ahead. Most importantly, if you do it right, it will contain 30-50 goals that are truly important and meaningful to you. It’s incredibly useful to have that laid out in front of you throughout the year.

However, it’s only the beginning. The next step is to actually track yourself against these goals. That consists of two components:

The first one is a monthly plan that you should put together in the beginning of each month. For me, as January rolled around, I realized that there are 20+ different things I need to do this month to move forward with the goals and unless I plan to incorporate them into my routine, I can easily drop the ball. So, I recommend going through your goals in the beginning of each month and looking at what needs to be done that month and moving that into a separate To-Do list.

The second component is the Quarterly Review. Your chances of actually completing most of your set objectives by the end of the year is much higher if you evaluate yourself against your goals on a regular basis. As the year goes by, it’s helpful to setup a time every 3 months to go over your progress and see how you’re doing.

It’s important to note that completing all of the goals is not necessarily realistic because they can become outdated or irrelevant. Plus, if you do complete them all, it’s possible that they were simply set too low. In my opinion, if you’re able to do about 75-80% of them, then you’re doing quite well.

Final Thoughts

I turned 25 recently and, on that birthday, there was a flashback to celebrating the 21st birthday a few years ago. It was fascinating to realize that 4 years have gone by so quickly and a reminder that the next 4 will go by as well.

I firmly believe that we need to live our lives deliberately or the years will get away from us and we’ll just be left with things that we’ve wanted to accomplish, but “just never had enough time” for. I also believe that we tend to overestimate the amount of things we can do in a day, yet underestimate what we can accomplish in a year. When you think about what you want to do over the year and put down concrete objectives and steps, it has a way of gaining a form and becoming a reality.

I hope that you will go ahead and try the exercise for yourself.

In the meantime, if you want to see my 2011 Annual Review & Plan, you can view it here.

Credit: I’ve gotten the idea and guidance for the Annual Review from the blog, Art of Non-Conformity. I’ve made some changes to it and customized to fit my own needs, but the credit for the idea certainly goes to the original author, Chris Guillebaeu.

What Does Caring About the Little Details Says About You?

How can you tell if the work that you’re doing is truly your “thing”? If it’s something that you’re meant to be doing, as opposed to doing it for the paycheck or just because you’re going through the motions?

Sometimes, we can tell quite easily when it’s not “our” thing. We simply don’t enjoy the work, don’t look forward to it, or see it as a dead-end path. Or, there is the opposite, there is no doubt in your mind that this is what you’re meant to be doing.

But oftentimes, the answer can be hidden in the shades of gray. This can happen in a job that you do enjoy to a large degree and things aren’t all good or all bad, yet there is a nagging feeling that it’s not really what you want.

It can come down to one characteristic that helps reveal whether the work is the right fit. Caring about the little details.

When you’re doing work that you feel you are meant to be doing, your motivation comes from the internal satisfaction of the work itself. Doing the job well is rewarding enough. And that clearly shows when you care about the little details that create the distinction between the work that’s “good enough” and work that’s “great”. Sometimes those details are not noticed by anybody else, except yourself. Caring about the little things is ultimately what ends up separating the true passionate individuals and professionals from everybody else.

On the other hand, if your motivation comes from external factors – whether it’s money, stability, or fear – it becomes easier to let the details slip. That’s not to say that you won’t try to do your best, but simply that these details won’t seem as important. After all, as long as you get the job done, it’s good enough. You don’t necessarily see the point in spending more time on a task, if the end result is roughly the same.

There are, of course, other factors that come into play that can affect this. Burnout and stress can cause passionate and committed people to start slipping, even if they don’t intend to. Poor management can stifle creativity and attention to detail, if it  constantly shifts priorities and focus of work. But, ultimately, the external factors only put emphasis on what is already there – they are not responsible nor will completely change whether you love your work or not.

Why is it even important to understand this? If you realize that your work isn’t your calling, what’s the purpose of even knowing that?

Underlying Reasons – at the end of the day, we should understand the reasons that make us do the things that we do. Not everyone is always in a position to completely change their situation, but if we aren’t consciously aware of what we’d want to change, we don’t even have a chance to try.

Going With the Flow - as it happens for many of us, we end up getting caught in a certain flow of college, work, career. Many of the paths that we end up taking happen by accident or unintentionally. While that is perfectly normal – as we’re usually not able to predict all of the opportunities that will be available to us in advance anyway – we should still pause every once in a while and re-evaluate if we’re still heading in the right direction.

To Sleep Well At Night - a writer once said that the reason he made the plunge into writing was so that he could sleep well at night. He would often wake up with ideas and thoughts that would keep nagging him and he’d be unable to go back to sleep until he started putting them down on paper. It’s not just about writing – this applies to any sort of work: to sleep great at night, you need to feel that you’re doing something that calls out to you.

“The soul of the world is nourished by people’s happiness. And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy. To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation. All things are one.”  The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Is Bigger Really Always Better?

In our culture, we often equate the concept of bigger with being better. Getting a large ice cream cone will yield us more satisfaction than a smaller one, making $200,000 per year will make us happier than $100,000, and having a larger… well, you know.

It’s natural that the same idea applies to when you’re launching a new business. Oftentimes, before you even start, you’re already thinking about how you’re going to expand.

I found myself doing just that last year. When I was working with a partner on launching a hostel in New York, our plan from Day 1 was to go to about 5 locations within 5 years. We wanted to get the first one right within a year and a half and then begin to aggressively expand in other cities.

Thinking back to that moment now, I was struggling to figure out why was this the goal. Did running one location somehow feel inferior or was going to be less satisfying than 5? Was making more money worth having 5 times the headache? Was it worth spreading ourselves thin and potentially sacrificing quality in the never-ending pursuit of growth?

I’ve had a few answers for this. I suppose that it would’ve been more of a status symbol to be able to say that I own a national chain of hostels, instead of a single location in New York. And perhaps it would be interesting to be able to operate in different cities, as a learning experience. Finally, it’s also likely that having a larger chain would make it a more attractive business to be acquired down the line, so it would yield a bigger pay off. But, the most subtle yet powerful reason would probably be boredom. Within a year or two, if you build your business right, it ends up running yourself and you begin to seek out other challenges,

But would it make work and life more satisfying and happier? I ultimately don’t think so. More was not necessarily going to lead to a more fulfilling life.

Working in the current startup, we’re in a similar mode. The plan is to expand and become bigger and service more people as soon as we possibly can. Yet I can’t help but feel that we’re doing this on an autopilot, where we automatically equate bigger with being better and more successful. What if we only remained in one city, but did it really well? What if we never grew beyond a small staff of people and a base of loyal customers? What if it was a lifestyle business where you’d be able to keep a normal balance between life and work? Is that inherently bad because it doesn’t go with the “grow, grow, grow” mantra?

Ultimately, if becoming larger is something that you think will make your life and the business better, than by all means – go for it. However, before expanding for expansion’s sake, think about the true motivations behind this. There is a lot at stake.

The Dilemma of Too Many Doors

About 6 months ago, I’ve written a post called “Making a Choice, Any Choice” which covered some some of the problems associated with indecisiveness. Getting stuck in a “limbo” between multiple options, unable to commit to any specific one, can end up being even more damaging that making a wrong choice.

A few weeks ago, I’ve read a book called “Predictably Irrational”, by Dan Ariely, which goes into some of the irrational, yet expected and predictable behaviors that people seem to repeat again and again. One of the behaviors covered was the the difficulties we face when minimizing or removing choices.

In general, we all feel that having no choice is a bad thing. Especially in the Western world, we grow up feeling that the more we have to choose from, the better our odds are at selecting the right choice. However, as counterintuitive as it may be, it turns out that having too many choices ends up being bad for us just as well. Not only it makes it more difficult to make a commitment, but it also ends up wasting our time as we contemplate each of the possibilities.

The Effect of Too Many Doors

A great example of this was shown in an experiment conducted by Dan Ariely. In the experiment, he selected 3 groups of MIT students and asked them to play a simple computer game.

In the game, they saw 3 doors on the screen. The first click on any of the doors would open it, and any subsequent click on the open door would earn them a random amount of money. At any point, they could “spend a click” on opening another door, which would also close the previous one (these clicks would not earn them cash).

The objective was to earn as much money as possible with a limit of 50 clicks. Since the amounts were random, the best strategy was to waste as little clicks as possible on opening doors and instead use them within a single door as “money-generating” clicks. Most people figured it out relatively quickly. Simple enough, yes?

The second group of people had a similar task. The difference was that with every click they would make within 1 door, the other doors would begin to diminish by 1/8th. In other words, if a door wouldn’t get any “attention” within 8 clicks, it would disappear completely off the screen. However, clicking on a disappearing door during that time would bring it back to full size and allow you to generate money within it.

This twist doesn’t change the strategy people should pursue. It’s still more profitable to use up your clicks within a single door rather than try to resurrect disappearing ones. Did the students get that? The results are shocking – most people had such an aversion to “losing” the doors, that they would jump from one to the other throughout the entire game. End result? Much poorer performance than the first group.

Final group had a similar experience, except that they were told that even if a door disappears completely off the screen, they can always bring it back by clicking once in its space. In other words, it was only an illusion of disappearing and the students knew it. How did they perform? As poorly as group #2. Even though they knew that the door can be brought back at any moment, they simply could not bear to see even the illusion of losing the door.

The Downside of Choice

As the experiment shows, there are a few issues that are surprising and worrying.

First, having more choices does not always yield us better results. Having 5 vacation destinations to choose from instead of a single 1 may actually diminish our enjoyment of any of them because we are always concerned about what we “could” be missing out on. It’s also been said that it’s more difficult to find and form relationships in a busy urban area than a smaller, more compact town precisely because of a dizzying array of choice. Having more options  keeps us from committing to any single one and giving it our all.

Second issue is our aversion to loss. Even if we rationally understand that we don’t need to have a dozen options to choose from when it comes down to selecting a vacation destination or a brand of batteries, it is very difficult to willingly remove a choice. We see this behavior reoccur in many other scenarios – for example, finding $100 on the street will make us a bit happy. However, losing your wallet with $100 will make us feel worse by an order of magnitude. There is certainly a reason why people say that we often don’t know exactly what we have until we lose it.

Now What?

If we have unlimited energy and unlimited time, perhaps we could keep as many “doors” as we want open. However, given our limitations, there is a cost associated with spreading yourself thin, trying to do it all, and not giving your full commitment to any one thing. As the doors experiment clearly showed, we can often come out at a loss when we try to do it all at once.

As Dan Ariely highlights, perhaps that once we become better aware of our emotions when it comes down to options and aversion to loss, we end up in a position to make better judgments.

I think so.

Entrepreneurship Lesson #323 – On “GST”, Being Reliable and Following Up

I can’t claim that I know the formula to success. In fact, I am cautious about even saying that there is one specific thing that works for all people at all times.

However, over the years, I’ve been in enough different work settings, worked with a range of different people and managed enough businesses to notice that there are a few clear traits that differentiate people who manage to find success in whatever endeavor they pursue and those that seem to struggle in making progress.

The good news is that none of these factors are pre-determined by birth. All of them are habits that we can develop with just a bit of conscious effort.  In fact, they seem so simple that you have to wonder why more people don’t do them!

Habit #1 – “GST” – Gettting Sh*t Done

One of the things that you can quickly observe about people that “push through” and move forward is that they have this ability of getting things done. If they commit to something, they find a way to do it.

It doesn’t always mean big projects or life-changing goals – the rule applies just as much to the small things that require attention, as it does to bigger projects.

What would be the opposite of “GST”? Talking about starting something but never quite making the first step, getting overwhelmed when things get hectic, or just dropping the ball on commitments. There is always an excuse to be found for not doing something, but at the end of the day when we look back at this time – but the end result is the same: no forward progress is made.

How to Become an Early Riser – Starting Your Day at 5am

If you ask somebody as to what are the main reasons they are not pursuing some of the things they want to do, the answer is often the same: “there is just not enough time in the day.”

There’s certainly a limited number of hours in the day, but you can’t help but notice that some people just manage to get done so much accomplished with their time while others seem to never be able to catch up with themselves. Considering that we’re all working with the same 24 hours in the day, something else must be going on.

I recently found myself in the latter camp of people – the ones that are constantly trying to catch up with themselves. With all of the demands of work, much of the time was spent simply reacting to whatever was thrown at me. This was not particularly productive or efficient.

Moreover, I’ve put together a number of goals that I wanted to accomplish this year and beyond, but quickly realized that under the current circumstances, they were not likely to realize themselves unless a serious adjustment was made in the daily routine. The choices essentially varied from either “quit the job” (to free up the time) or change the schedule. I decided to try the latter.

Making the Switch

As many others working in a startup environment, I’ve gotten used to the “go to sleep late, wake up late” routine. After all, most people don’t even get to the office until 11ish because they likely stayed up late last night doing work. Unfortunately, by the time you get started, half the day is already gone and by the time you finish, it’s already too late to really do anything else productive – personally or professionally.

While reading up about different scheduling routines, I’ve come across a guy that was writing about an adjustment that he’s made a few years back when he started waking up at 4.30am every day. I’ve always thought that it was an interesting idea and heard people swear by it, but I generally liked sleep too much to actually pursue it.

This time was different, however. There was a clear fork in the road where one direction meant getting the goals accomplished, while the other meant… sleep. A few years down the line, it’d be a shame to look back at what you accomplished and see “got more sleep” at the top of the list.

August Challenge

I’ve decided to start the month off with a new routine of waking up at 5am, instead of the typical 8.30ish. To do this successfully, it was important to have a clear vision for what was going to be done with the extra time in the morning.

After looking at my personal goals for the year, there were a couple of them in particular that seemed like a good fit for the early mornings. These specific goals were:

- get more exercise and stay in shape,
- read at least 26 books per year (1 every 2 weeks),
- start writing on the blog at least twice per week;
- improve productivity and focus with work.

After reviewing them, I saw down and put together a rough outline of how the first 5 hours of the morning would be spent. It looks something like this:

5.00am – Wake up and stretch.
5.20am – Go for a 40 minute run (or other form of exercise).
6.00am – Shower, get ready.
6.25am – Write on the blog.
7.15am – Get breakfast and read.
8.00am – Plan out the day
8.20am – Do one major task – Personal or Work-related – before heading to the office.
9.45am – Head to work

As a result, by the time I get to work at 10am, I was able to complete several of my personal targets and handle one major work-related priority. The best part is that I also feel refreshed and have a clear vision for how the rest of the day will play out, which makes it much easier to deal with whatever gets thrown at you at the office.

8 Tips on How to Wake Up Earlier

Adjusting your schedule to start waking up 3+ hours earlier isn’t always easy. However, the following strategies definitely helped me to make the switch. It will help you as well.

- Have a very clear plan on what you want to do in the morning. It’s only worth waking this early if you have something very specific that you want to accomplish during the extra hours. It will help you stay motivated and productive. I’ve put together a specific plan on what I want to do from 5am until 9.45am (when I start heading to work), broken down in almost 30 minute intervals. You can certainly adjust it as you go along, but do have a plan to start.

- Have pleasurable and rewarding activities built in. While this is supposed to be a productive time, there is nothing wrong with adding some pleasurable activities in the middle. For me, it’s the opportunity to do some relaxing reading and have the time to go and get a good, delicious breakfast at a local cafe. Previously, I had time for neither and always regretted it. Now, this gives me something to look forward to when the alarm rings.

- Don’t let yourself slip. We are all too familiar with the little voice in the back of our heads that tries to convince us to sleep in for another 10 minutes after the alarm rings. After all, it’s only 10 minutes – we’ll still have plenty of time when we get up. Just don’t. Don’t negotiate with yourself. Get up, go to the bathroom to wash up, drink something – and within 5 minutes you won’t want to go back to sleep.

- Plan to go to sleep earlier. Waking up at 5am isn’t going to be terribly productive if you continue to go to sleep at 12-1am. Unless you’re one of the few rare people that can function perfectly well with 4-5 hours of sleep, it won’t do you much good if you’re feeling tired and sleepy the rest of the day. While the sleeping needs vary for all people, you do need to make an adjustment and go to sleep earlier. This is probably the hardest part as it oftentimes involves changing plans with other people, who aren’t on the same schedule as you.

- Make a bet with somebody else to keep yourself straight. The day I decided to do this, I went ahead and made a bet with a couple of my close friends. I told them that I’ll be able to do this for at least 26 days out of the first month – or otherwise, I’ll lose a chunk of money to them. This adds a big personal motivator as every time you don’t wake up on time, you have a risk of losing cash… and even more importantly, losing face with the friends. For me, this becomes a whole new challenge once I let other people know about it.

- Do something good for yourself. As some of the most productive time of the day, this is the perfect opportunity to get some exercise in. Doing so will set the tone for the rest of the day, make you feel amazing, and will definitely be a good use of your time. If the weather is good, do something outside. If not, go to the gym – most of them open pretty early too.

- Enjoy the start of the new day. Seeing a new day begin and observing the sunrise is probably one of the biggest perks and luxuries of the new routine. Not only it’s really amazing to be able to see the world awake for a new day, but it also makes you feel very privileged to be one of the few to see it. I make the point of writing for the blog in the morning while sitting outside on the porch. Absolutely worth it!

- Eat breakfast. This may seem insignificant, but as a result of waking up early, you can actually have time to eat a decent, unrushed breakfast. Do it at home, go to a cafe – but sit down for 30 minutes and take your time. It’s such a nice change from just grabbing something from the fridge or from elsewhere and just munching it down on the run.

Good luck!

Entrepreneurship Lesson #322: On Asking for Forgiveness, Rather than Permission

When you are growing up as a child, parents often try to reinforce the concept of permission. If you want something, you have to ask for it – politely. Only then, can you  actually get it.

The idea of good manners certainly makes sense when you’re a young child. But could it be that it’s actually preventing our progress later on in life – especially in the world of startups, when you’re trying to create something new or go against status quo?

Asking for Forgiveness, Rather than Permission

As we enter adult life, we come face-to-face with many layers of bureaucracy in the world. Especially, in the workplace, whether it’s within our own company, where we need to get permission from 3 different layers of management or with the people on the outside. We are conditioned to think that if we want something, we need to have somebody give us permission to do so.

However, working in a fast-paced startup environment begins to shift your mindset. More often than not, asking for permission just doesn’t get you anywhere. In the best case scenario, it leads to numerous delays. In the worst case scenario, if your request is just a little out of the ordinary, people will have a tendency to reject it by auto-pilot instead of taking the time to entertain it.

When working at Kiva.org – the world’s faster growing online non-profit – I really learned how this point is driven home . Their idea of enabling citizens in the developed countries to sponsor small entrepreneurs in the developing world was so outside the framework of anything else that existed at that time, that they had no precedent to follow and certainly nobody that would “give them official permission to proceed”.

They spent a significant chunk of time trying to get an answer from the SEC on whether they could move forward with their venture and nobody could give them a straight answer. Until one day that just decided to go for it and deal with the consequences later.

They ultimately did.

Although their path was not without challenges, if they waited for somebody to give them permission to operate, they may still have not launched. Or worse yet, somebody would’ve told them no.

What ended up happening in that situation – and in many others – when you just go through and it, the consequences are often less dramatic and long-lasting than you expect. Even if you get in trouble, the chances are that things will find a way of working out. And if you succeed with what you set out to do, you’ll find that a lot of the initial resistance and bureaucracy begins disappear, as people begin to believe more in your idea.

Ultimately, if you truly want to achieve something and believe that this is the right thing to do, you simply can’t afford to sit on the sidelines until someone “lets” you do it. Give yourself permission and go for it.

Entrepreneurship Lesson #321: On The Importance of Sitting Together

At the time when I ran a publishing startup, our first office was a small 200-square feet place, on the 2nd floor of a bank branch, c0nsisting of one irregular shaped room. We started off with just 3 people and the space felt a little tight. So you can imagine what it was like when we expanded to 6 – and used it for storing thousands of copies of the magazine that we published every quarter.

That said, there was something really productive about all of us working out of the same open (albeit slightly claustrophobic) space. The fact that there was no walls made collaboration easier and made it really easy to resolve issues quickly and work on team tasks effectively. After all, if there was any problems, all we had to do was turn the chair around and we could resolve it right away.

Eventually when we moved to a larger space consisting of 2 separate rooms, we had to divide up the staff and the effect was immediate. Interaction among people sitting in one room vs. people sitting in the other decreased immensely. You bonded with the people closer to you and grew apart from people in the other room – even though they were less than 50 feet away.

I would take it even step further now. In the currently startup, we have a similar environment where there is just have one giant open area with many tables strewn about (there are multiple startups working out of this incubator). That works very well. In our case, we have 4 tables put together and people sitting around them, facing one another. Amazingly enough, you can even see the same effect on a micro-scale with the people who sit next to each other. There is more interaction going on among those who sit side by side, rather than across the table.

Perhaps some of that is self-selected – we put people with common responsibilities closer to one another. But I believe  it goes beyond that. It’s the little things that begin adding up – whether it’s sharing and discussing a latest article or showing the person next to you an email you want their opinion on – without even noticing, these things end up bringing you closer together professionally.

Maybe this is where the “right-hand man” expression is coming from…

Your Future – 3 Years at a Time

Where do you see yourself in 10 years? You’ve probably heard this question come up in job interviews. Or perhaps you’ve been asked – what do you want to do for the rest of your life?

Personally, I always found it very hard to answer these questions. I wonder how accurately can we really predict a 10-year timeframe. When we were 15, did we know everything that would happen to us leading up to our 25 year birthday? Did we anticipate how our interests would change and evolve and all the new things and experiences we’d come across?

Some people know when they are 4 that they want to be a doctor or an astronaut or anybody in between. For the rest of us, the path is less set in stone. Over time, for most of us, life took a series of unexpected turns, we gained new perspectives, our work and family situations may have changed, and we generally started to look at the world differently.

Daniel Gilbert, the author of a book called Stumbling on Happiness, claims that generally, we are pretty poor predictors of what will make us happy in the future. His reasoning is that our imagination fails to realize how things will feel when they actually occur and that the longer the timeframe is, the more likely we’ll be wrong.

In other words, if you try to visualize yourself 15 years from now, where you live, how you feel, and so on – it will be most likely inaccurate (and, surprisingly, can be quite similar to your existing situation).

We can see this happening all around us – people make decisions that they ultimately end up unhappy with. I’ve been around a lot of folks that have gone to study Finance because they were attracted to the prospect of making $100,000 per year. It takes many of them a couple of years to realize that this money doesn’t really matter that much because they are unfulfilled in their personal life and have no time for anything else.

What went wrong? We failed to predict and anticipate what will make us happy down the line.

The 3-Year Timeframe

So, if you can’t accurately predict yourself in 10 years, how should you plan ahead? We still need to setup goals and a general sense direction for ourselves, right?

Yes, we do. We certainly need to better understand in general what kind of things make us happy, but it’s also important to keep in mind that these things change as we change. Having a desire to travel the world today may take a backseat to raising your family when you get your first child.

While not perfect, I try to build my plans and goals around a 3 year term (could be 2, could be 4 – depends on you). Anything longer and I don’t think I can predict what will really be going on then.

Three years is short enough for you to be able to visualize where you’ll end up, but it is long enough to make some real achievements in the meantime.

This is particularly pertinent when you’re thinking about your work opportunities. As I’m writing this, I have an interesting job opportunity with a startup organization on the table that I’m considering taking. It’s great in terms of getting involved in an exciting and different project, playing a key role with the company, and making a contribution to the society.

However, deep down, I know that I want to return to running my own company a couple of years down the line. So, being able to project this in 2-3 year terms and making a conscious decision that after this term, I will re-evaluate my direction makes it a lot easier to commit to this.

There will be, no doubt, people that will be skeptical of approaching this from a 3 year goal perspective. Some may say that you’re jumping around too much from one thing to another without becoming specialized in any. Others may feel that it’s too much work if you try to change your line of work so frequently.

That’s fine. This is not for everybody. Rather, this is for those who are still not entirely sure what they want to ultimately do in their lives and those that want to experience as much as possible by trying themselves in different roles. It’s simply about giving yourself a permission to realize that it’s OK to change directions after a few years.

Unemployed? Making the most of 9 to 5!

You never really realize what being unemployed truly feels like, until you find yourself in this situation. Although I strongly believe in not making excuses for it, I do have to admit that it can be challenging.

Prior to that, you think that when you suddenly have all of that free time, you are able to accomplish all of the things you’ve wanted to but never had the time. The actual reality turns out to be quite different.  Instead of fixing up the house, going to travel for a bit, or learning a new skill – you can often end up in this hazy state where days go by and mold into one another.

The whole process can end up being quite demoralizing – it’s no coincidence that the depression is also on the rise nationwide. We often tend to attach our sense of identity to the type of work that we do, so when we become unemployed, our levels of confidence and self-worth end up going down as well.

The most challenging part of it all can be making the most of your time while you are looking for work. It’s often difficult to enjoy yourself at any activity, because you always have that little voice in the back of your mind saying that: “maybe you should be looking for work right now?” or “should you really be relaxing right now while you’re not bringing an income.”

But let’s face the facts. Looking for work doesn’t take up 8 hours a day (typically). Unemployment can last for a pretty long time. Feeling guilty doesn’t get you anywhere.

So, what can you do to turn the situation around a bit? Everybody probably has their own advice to offer, but here are a few things that work for me:

- Focus on things that you DO have control over, such as your health and fitness.

When you’re unemployed, it often feels that you’ve lost the control over your own destiny and that ends up spilling over in other parts of your life.

It’s important to realize that you are still in control of many things – your health being one of them. You may not be able to control your job, but you can focus on starting an exercise routine and better eating habits.

I’ve been doing some jogging on and off for a while before. However, I decided to sign up for a half-marathon three months in advance and to begin training daily for it.

This turned out to be very helpful on several levels. For one, that hour and a half a day of running and exercising gets your mind off things and leaves you feeling great afterwards.

Secondly, having a specific goal forced me to really commit to training on a daily basis. It gives a purpose and it keeps me accountable.

Whatever exercice regimen you set for yourself, make sure to be clear about your goals and work on a week-by-week plan on getting there.

- Use the free time to try new activities and make sure to get out of the house. Meetup.com is great for that.

This is an often-repeated advice and may sound a bit like a cliche, but I believe that it’s truly important to your own well-being to get out of the house on a regular basis and do things with other people.

It keeps you active, improves your confidence as you meet others in a similar situation, and even develops your interests and hobbies further.

For myself, I’ve joined meetup.com and ended up in a couple of great groups. Among them, I usually end up attending 1 or 2 events per week, ranging from hiking and cycling to just playing ping-pong or meeting up in a cafe.

In fact, I liked it to much that I started my own group focused around outdoor recreation.This also forces me to focus and plan my free time better.

- Consider volunteering. We are happier when we give back.

People often find that they are most fulfilled when they do work that benefits others. Even if you don’t have a paying job right now, it doesn’t mean that you can’t contribute to others. Volunteering is a good way to start with a small time commitment and you can often be surprised at just what kind of opportunities you may have available to you.

For example, in the past, I’ve spent a few years volunteering as a Night Disaster Responder for the American Red Cross. Not only I was able to pick up valuable skills, like First Aid, Shelter Operations, Mass Care, and so on – but it was also an opportunity to do something that I could never do otherwise – responding to fires, floods, and other disasters in New York City.

- Limit TV consumption.

This may be a tough one for many. When there is a lot of downtime, we are often drawn to the TV as a way to pass the time and forget about the troubles of reality. However, I think that many find that if they spend 3-4 hours watching television, they come out feeling even worse than they did beforehand. It has a power to suck your energy out of you.

I would highly recommend to limit the amount of time you spend on TV and when you do, sit down with a specific goal in mind (ie. watch a specific movie rather than 4 hours of day time television). Better yet, go and spend that time outside, read a book, or engage in physical activities – you will certainly feel better afterwards.

- Create a schedule for your days and goals for your months.

It can be a terrible feeling to realize that yet another month has gone by and you haven’t really accomplished anything since then.

In order to avoid that, you need to create some structure to your day – even if it’s all self-made. It can be challenging when you don’t have any specific commitments or things that absolutely have to complete during the day.

But even then, you can still plan your days. To give you an example, I aim to wake up same time every morning and sit down to write out the activities for the day. It usually includes 3-4 hours of job hunting, an a hour and a half for exercising and running, another hour or two for working on miscellaneous projects and the rest of the time on various household chores. This helps you avoid the feeling that the whole day has gone by and you didn’t get to do anything.

On a more long-term scale, you also want to sit down and consciously think about what you’d like to accomplish over the course of this month and the next one. If you don’t set up these goals, you should not be surprised when the month goes by and nothing gets accomplished.

Although far from perfect, here’s an example of my own:

- Running – get up to 30 miles per week (increase slightly each month)

- Outdoor Recreation – organize two trips per month into the outdoors (hiking, etc.)

- Blog – write at least 1 blog post per week

- Time Management – wake up by 7.45am every morning.

- Dancing – learn how to swing dance within 3 months by taking at least 1 lesson per week

You get the point.

The fact of the matter is that having these goals – whether it’s swing dancing or getting outdoors – keeps you straight and gives you an opportunity to focus on what you can do during the time of unemployment.

Don’t lose this time. You won’t have a chance to get it back.