I am a planner by nature. Everything I do is planned out ahead of time. Luckily though, I can also roll with the punches and change doesn’t require too much effort for me to adapt to, though I couldn’t say that for the younger me. In any case, one area that I love to plan is my future. In fact, I credit my planning for me being where I am now. Let me explain.

Planning My Future

I have a solid idea for where I want to be in 20 years. Working is not one of them. Let me rephrase that – I might be working, but not in the sense that most think about work. I won’t be going into an office for 40 hours a week. I’ll be doing a job I love to do – like blogging – on my terms.

Of course to get there, I need to have a plan. Here is where my planning comes into play. I see where I want to be and then I figure out how I can best get there. I then create a plan to keep me on track for getting to that place I want to be.

Dealing With Wrenches

Of course, life happens and things muddy up my plans. The key is to stop and take a minute to re-evaluate things. When I was younger, I would get upset and freak out. Surprisingly, this got me nowhere. I learned that nothing is set in stone and that I can change my plans and still reach my goal. It’s like driving down a road that has a detour due to construction. You will still get to your destination, you just will take a different route than planned.

Plan Your Future

With all this said, I encourage you to plan out your future. You don’t need to have every single detail planned out, rather start small and just think. Keep a journal of your thoughts. Over the course of a few days or weeks, think about what you want your life to look like. Once you have a solid idea of what you want, then it is time to start planning. One quick side note, you will have thoughts come and go.

Not everything you initially think of will be important in the end. Just write everything down, but don’t feel obligated to include everything you write into your plans.

Once you have everything figured out, you need to create a plan. How will you get there? This step will also take you some time. You want to really think things through. Don’t get discouraged about not being able to do some things. Through this process you will understand what is really important to you.

For example, I always wanted a huge house. I just thought it would be cool to have. Even if I would pay it off, I would still owe property taxes every year. In the area where I live, that would amount to over $20,000 a year for the house I want. It became clear rather quickly that having a huge house and retiring early were not going to work well together. So I had to scrap one. The house went because retiring early was much more important to me.

Once you have your plan created, it is time to implement it and follow it. Keep it in front of you so you can refer to it and stay on track. And as I have pointed out a few times, don’t give up if plans change. Think and adapt.

Final Thoughts

In the end, planning your future is huge. It will help you to better yourself and your circumstances both now and in the future. By thinking of what we want our lives to look like now, we increase the likelihood of those thoughts becoming a reality. Take the time to think and plan your future and when it becomes a reality, enjoy it to its fullest.