Plan Your Future or Commit to Daily Tasks and Decide Later?

Planning for the future is necessary, and committing and accomplishing the daily targets are also equally crucial. Without plans, you will not get a direction and you will be distracted soon. Setting long-term goals will help you choose the path and continue walking on it until you reach your destiny. Daily targets are also necessary, they assist us to stay on track and in alignment with the chosen path. Distractions are everywhere and they are strong influencers to waste our time and leave us somewhere in between the forest. Setting daily goals help us to counter distractions. Along with planning for the future, we would also plan our day the night before. Planning should be done strategically to avoid energy dissipation via distractions. Diversions can be caused by many things. When we continue doing the same thing over and over again, we get bored of it, and we constantly look to do something exciting and new, something that would be very different from what we are doing now. The world is filled with distractions if you don’t have a target. So setting targets or objectives or goals is necessary. Not just future targets, daily targets help to shape our thinking and processing of reaching our aims too. It is not an either-or choice, it is about the balance between the two that needs to be established.

Why and how should you plan your day?

Planning a day will help you to remain focused and resolute, thus wasting minimum time and energy and maintaining balance in personal and professional life. It also helps you to stay organized and accountable. You should plan your days the night before and follow your routines diligently. Let’s see how can you plan your day:

• Break your big goals into smaller ones: When you have to climb a mountain, you don’t do it immediately, you take one step at a time. So, break your big goals into simple smaller ones that can be achieved easily. Review them as well and see how can you align your smaller goals along with your potential tasks, so that it becomes easier and more enjoyable for you to perform these tasks.
• Perceive your week as a whole: You can also set weekly targets and break them into day-to-day targets. Planning your week can help you get an overview of how to take the same process on a wider level. Some objectives need to be achieved every day, while others can be done a few days a week so that you have an empty slot to shift some other task in that slot. This builds momentum and working efficiency.
• Make a to-do list: To-do lists will allow you to stay focused and utilize your energy only on the task that is most important and needs to be completed, and not on the other unnecessary ones. To-do lists help you to stick to the plans and proceed accordingly.
• First, add the completed tasks to your weekly to-do list: When you take a glance at your accomplished targets, you will be motivated and confident to put on newer tasks. The boost in your self-confidence will enable you to pursue and do the other pending tasks with the same enthusiasm.
• Add breaks to your to-do list: Breaks keep you fresh. Schedule breaks to your timetable or to-do list. When you’re fresh, you’re more alert, effective, and receptive to the task at hand. You must ensure that your breaks are not of long duration, they must be enough to freshen you up and not distract you from the task. Make sure to add them too to increase your productivity.

Why should you have a future goal?

• Future goals align your focus: It’s quite an accountable task to reach where you want in life, but how are you going to reach somewhere if you’ve not set targets? It is a common notion among young people that living life without goals is to live freely. Well, that is not the case. This is something like heading for a disaster. Without long-term goals, you will lack the degree of direction and alignment to reach where you wish to reach. Goals provide a direction in which you have to proceed, you will end up wasting your time, energy, and efforts. To remain focused and concentrated set long-term goals and you will see yourself propelling in the right direction to make things happen.
• Goals help you not constantly switch: You may be inspired by certain professions that are too flashy and remain in the spotlight, this distracts you a lot if you do not have a fixed long-term goal. If you jeep changing the steering, you will not reach anywhere. So, goals are important because they will not only tell you what is important in life but also help you realize the things you need to give up or avoid to achieve.
• Encourage you to take action: Future goals or long-term goals allow you to take action and break them down into smaller ones. You’re encouraged to work and proceed in the direction. When you break larger objectives into smaller ones, you are making them more manageable for you to accomplish. Taking action on more manageable tasks is easier. Hence you are encouraged to take action.
• Continuous improvement: When you set long-term goals and break them into smaller ones you are side by side also creating room for improvement. Improvement in terms of correcting smaller targets, improvising them, and also you every day thrive to become a better person. Better than you were yesterday. Slow and steady improvement will completely transform you into a different individual. You will think differently and would enjoy so much more while accomplishing your short-term goals and taking a step forward to reach your ultimate objective.

It is not a debate about planning your future or committing to short-term goals at the moment and deciding later, it is about the balance that needs to be maintained and one step leads to another. It’s the lead you get after accomplishing a goal to continue and reach the ultimate objective.

Also read: Importance of Time

Frequently Asked Questions

Ques 1. What if we don’t set goals at all?

Ans 1. You will then be directionless, and you’ll be wasting your time and energy doing things that don’t matter at all. It’s better to invest time and energy into something that will help you to achieve and become something than doing nothing at all.

Ques 2. After setting a goal, should we even abandon our hobbies?

Ans 2. No. Setting goals will provide you with a direction to head and accomplish what you wish to. It doesn’t mean giving up on your interests and hobbies. Hobbies keep you refreshed. If you will give up on your hobbies, you will not enjoy the process at all. It would feel like a burden.

Ques 3. Is the process to reach the goal important or just the results?

Ans 3. You can never enjoy results if you can not enjoy the process. It is the process that keeps you going. If you’ll focus more on results, you’ll be in a hurry to finish the task, and like that, you will not be able to enjoy anything at all.