My goal is to live the life I want to live knowing that what I want will change over time. My biggest drive right now is to gain financial independence through both lowering my cost of living, a high savings rate and continuing to grow my income. I work full time as a software developer but have also started a business on the side with a partner. That is part of my strategy of increasing income. Recently, I've realized that business, while bootstrap profitable, is not going to grow as fast as I want so I am going to start another business (and I expect this cycle will continue until I reach FI -- it may continue beyond that as it is fun).
So my goal is overall happiness with financial independence being a key part of it. I should note that I do not strive to be excessively frugal -- just cut where it doesn't impact myself or my partner. I've also elected to have children and I think that contributes positively to my overall happiness although it can be expensive and they can take a lot of time (so I think that is very much an individual choice).
Free time, salary (from dev job only) and improving my skills. The goals right now are money and time to spend on holidays, hobbies, and hobby business. In the future when I have children, swap out hobbies for children (I live in the UK where it's cheaper to be a stay-at-home parent if you earn less than £ 22k).
My goals are long term. Right now, I know how to do things related to the web very well. My long term goal is to parlay that into a fortune to pursue my second ambition: space.
I have few long term goals, primarily health/fitness (now at the sustainment phase of this) and financial (to be able to properly retire without needing supplemental income). Most of my goals are near-to-medium term. I base them off of things I want/need to do but cannot for some reason.
I cannot, presently, understand the systems at work to the extent I want to (astrodynamics, satellites and such; calc, linear, and physics are 15 years in my past). So I'm deliberately setting aside time to study and practice those topics to enable my understanding of astrodynamics and what we do at work. I don't intend to master it (that is, to the extent of the literal rocket scientists in the office), and I don't know that I'll need or use it after this current position. But I do want/need to know it now so I've established goals around it.
I want to make furniture, and have the ability to do decent work. I took some courses and enjoyed it, and demonstrated to myself I wasn't incompetent at it. But I have no equipment in my home to do it. So I'm setting aside money to buy some basic equipment, and planning to set aside time to spend on it once I do.
What, in your life, is currently blocked from you or are you not at your desired level? Create near-term goals to remove the blockers or achieve your desired capability/level. If you start to make a habit out of thinking this way and developing routines and systems to enable these goals, it may become easier to make long term ones. Or you may never really make long term goals, we don't all need them.
I got some hot cash several years ago unintentionally. After that, I set up 3 goals:
1. Maintain high quality life
2. Improve skills for my career
3. Meet more interesting friends
With these three goals, I did these:
1. Maintain high quality life
1.1. I bought myself a lot of insurance, both financial and life
1.2. One nice apartment
1.3. Put about 20% to some low risk fund
2. Improve skills for my career
2.1. Best keyboard, chairs and ... as a developer
2.2. Books
2.3. Donate some open source projects and make friends with contributors
3. Meet more interesting friends
3.1. Host regular meetups of great developers in China
3.2. Go to a nice gym as I find people who work out hard and keep self-discipline are normally class-a players
3.3. Get much more opportunities when focusing on what's next than what you're paid
I like to have a useful goal. It helps me find purpose and complete the task. Then I might do some reading or other research to learn the basics. Then I try to do whatever it is. I evaluate how it went and do more research to make improvements.
For example, I want to grow mushrooms. First I start with a grow your own kit. Then I read a book by an expert. Then I bought mushroom plugs for logs. Now I built some equiptment, learned sterile techniques, and I am culturing mushrooms to create my own mushroom plugs.
Depends on how much you want to do. This year i want to (a) eat, (b) marry, and (c) get my degree. The first goal demands a little time to earn money. The seconds one demands mostly time, since debt is inevitable. To get the degree i have to learn.
I'd also like to work (d) on my project ideas, but there isn't enough time left after (a)-(c).
It's great to have fun, but I find I like to have goals that allow me to focus on what is necessary, and try and de-emphasize those things that are not really necessary.
My current goals include code that will hopefully contribute substantially to the ease with which I can do my job, and to the happiness of our customers.
This is achievable, and a great way to maintain focus.
I love having goals. It keeps me focused especially when I fall behind. Working on watch.ly (pivoting to chatbot that connects users to sales reps etc via text) and Todo lists/financial goals keep me going. :)
house <- resource accumulation <- in-demand skills <- study
I learn what is in-demand. And then I acquire those in-demand skills. Then I practice those skills to earn the money I need to attain my goal.
But that's just me-- my goal is to earn money quickly.
This is why I focus on in-demand, popular, low-barrier languages & frameworks: python, javascript, SQL related ones.
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