This is maybe more tangible with this exercise: What do you wish you had started twelve years ago in 2006? (One check of 2006: Tim Ferriss’ blog started.) This became more tangible for me as I tried to organize and clear out 12,000+ pictures from Dropbox, with each year having healthy representation.
Is twelve years the right framework? Jeff Bezos has talked about planning for three years in the future. My friend Paul Bragiel, who in his late thirties, took a year off his life of angel investing and entrepreneurship to train for the Olympics. We got drinks when he was back, and remember most clearly this one phrase: “A year is nothing.”
A related thread: this quote attributed to Bill Gates: people overestimate what can be done in a year and underestimate what can be done in a decade.
I have read in another friend’s writing conversely that a year (or, implictly, more) is too much, that it is better to have monthly resolutions.
It is perhaps against the current of the meditation practice I am trying to establish but there seem to be two big categories of errors in goal setting:
- Not having any.
- Not eliminating some, in order to concentrate on others.
These are the thoughts swirling in my mind in the waning days of 2018 trying to set goals for next week, 2030, and everything in between.
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