Start at the end
Pick three to five areas of life that matter to you, such as work, money, home, health and people, and write one sentence for each describing where you want to be five years from today. Make each sentence specific enough that a stranger could tell whether it happened. "Be better with money" fails that test. "Own a home in the city where my sister lives" passes. If an area produces no honest sentence, leave it blank, since a plan with three real priorities beats one with five polite ones.
Work backward
For each five-year sentence, ask what must be true at year three for the outcome to be likely, then what must be true at the end of year one, then what you will do in the next ninety days. Take the home as an example.
- By year five, you close on a house with a $60,000 down payment.
- By year three, you hold $36,000, your credit score is above 740, and you have lived in the city for a year.
- By the end of year one, the car loan is gone and $12,000 is saved.
- Within ninety days, a separate savings account receives $1,000 automatically every month.
Only the last line is a task. The rest are checkpoints, and they exist so that you can tell early if you are off course.
Keep it to one page
A plan you cannot see at a glance will not be read again. One page holds the five-year sentences, the year-one checkpoints and this quarter's actions. Resist scripting years three and four closely. You do not yet know the job offer, the person or the layoff that will rearrange them, and a plan that pretends otherwise gets abandoned at the first surprise.
Decide your exits
For any large commitment, write down in advance the condition under which you would stop: if the business has no paying customers after twelve months, or if the degree still looks unnecessary after a year in the field. Deciding that in a calm moment spares you from deciding it in a desperate one.
The yearly review
Put a recurring date on the calendar, take an hour, and mark every checkpoint as hit, missed or no longer wanted. The third category is a success and not a failure. Then write the next year's checkpoints and the next ninety days.
Tip Share the page with one person who will ask about it. A plan that someone else has seen is markedly harder to quietly drop.
