13
votes
How far ahead are you thinking?
Every couple of days or once per week in those moments where you automatically think of and attempt to plan for the future, how far ahead are you thinking, and what about?
Every couple of days or once per week in those moments where you automatically think of and attempt to plan for the future, how far ahead are you thinking, and what about?
How Far?
Imagine a graph. The X-axis is time, and the Y-axis is "concreteness" of plans. The higher the Y-value, the more concrete the plan, and the lower the Y-value, the more vague and amorphous it is.
My graph looks roughly like a
y = 1/xplot.More specifically, though, I plan out general long-term goals with little to no concreteness, and I plan out a few fairly concrete milestones for the next few days or weeks to accomplish. Typically I don't track more than a few things at any given time, only keep tracking of what I need to be doing now and what I need to be doing next. The "now" tends to be very concrete and is actively worked on, the "next" is only somewhat concrete and subject to change depending on the results or findings of "now", and all subsequent tasks are likewise of increasingly lower concreteness as each one depends on the results and/or findings of the tasks leading up to it.
In other words, I keep a general guideline to follow for the long-term, which can span anywhere from months to years, and readjust my current priorities as necessary without feeling obligated to stick to a strict roadmap.
My rationale is that 1. "shit happens", and 2. sometimes things just work out differently than you expect them to. If you don't allow yourself to be flexible, then when things go awry you're just going to snap rather than allowing yourself to bend in the direction you need to.
What About?
Career, love, finances, life.
Career: I was once pursuing a career in music and started down the path of a degree in music, then shifted plans toward becoming a programmer and went into full gear on that. Short-term, I'm working with a startup I love. Long-term, I think about getting myself into a financial situation where I can comfortably continue working at startups or for non-profits without fussing over the size of my paycheck. I have no desire to work in a soul-draining corporate environment where I would be expected to put in excessive amounts of overtime.
Love: I was once considering marriage. We seemed pretty good together. Then her physical and mental health slowly but surely started to decline, starting with small sleep issues and unwarranted mistrust and building into chronic fatigue and apparent paranoid schizophrenia. Marriage was silently taken off the table sometime during that build-up, due to concerns regarding how I was being treated. The relationship gradually went south and the ever-piling list of problems finally culminated into the relationship's end a couple of months ago. I now have no intention of actively trying to get back into the dating scene in the short-term, but I'm leaving myself open. Long-term I intend on marrying. It's something I've always wanted, ever since I was a kid. It's just not a priority right now.
Finances: I once thought that I could easily live on very little of my paycheck and pay off my loans in just a few years, but then student loan payments, health insurance, taxes, and a whole bunch of other expenses left me with very little at the end of the month. Now I'm just hovering around financial stability and my efforts are primarily centered around helping this startup take off and hopefully cashing out after a few years or so.
Life: Hobbies. Self-exploration. Free time to do the things I never had the chance to when I was a kid or a teenager. A break from the daily grind to actually experience life without the ever-present weight of responsibility and obligations bearing down on my shoulders.
I have general goals. Things I want, things I'm working toward, things I intend to work toward eventually. But nothing is set in stone until I've put the chisel to it. I only think to the future to keep my bearings. Apart from that, I stay focused on the present where my efforts are most needed.
From half a year to a couple years. This feels like the horizon of reasonable predictability: I like plans to be reliable, but human body can randomly develop a bad disease, or other people can let me down, or political events can arise, the father into the future the more likely. About a year seems to be an approximate time such things take to develop, and a reasonably far projection of personal plans on the future.
What I think about: lack of crisis, presence of job, good health, rent without issues, and presence of friends.
Geez everything is kind of long term in my life atm. last weekend we booked a dinner with friends for next May, because it was the only time we could all be free together. Social events are typically booked months in advance, we have to purposely plan empty weekends just to have some time off.
Career wise I've been kind of coasting it lately, but I did go back to college at 36, with the intention of emigrating getting an IoT related job after. I now have graduated college and have almost 5 years professional experience programming in the IoT space.
With holidays my wife and I tend to look two to five years ahead.
I had some mental health issues a while back, so apart from the above we're taking it easy and enjoying the now.
We do save a bit for the future, we're putting by some money for our ten year old to have some cash for college or a deposit for a house.
Work wise, I'm happy in my current job, very happy, I'll push a little for progress in that area, but only in salary and specialization, I don't think I want to go to management. I'll see how I feel in three or four years.
Health is a lifestyle, so that's ongoing.
To be honest, I really only think of today and tomorrow. Which is extremely unfortunate because I get intense anxiety about time, the future, and not having enough time. I work awful hours and have bad money habits, so I'm trying to fix that, but I ruin it everytime. So every time I try to plan, anxiety or lack of money squashes it. Really my only plan is to try to fix my problems but that requires money and making doctor appointments, which give me awful anxiety. It's a vicious cycle