Heading for goals
I had an interesting conversation with a friend today. He mentioned that as a kid he hated the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” It seemed impossible to him that anyone could plan that far ahead. Even as an adult he says he has a hard time talking about plans farther out than a year or two. I’m a little different. I’ve always wanted to have a destination in mind even if I knew it would take a long time to get there.
I’ve long believed that the key to succeeding is to work with your natural inclinations rather than against them. So after the conversation was over I wondered how a short-term project person could work on a long term goal. I think the key is to zig zag. If you want to be a writer then make sure that the majority of your short term projects involve some form of writing. So you spend a couple of years keeping a blog. Then you work on a novel. Then you take a job writing technical manuals. Each short term project teaches you things about writing that can be taken to the next project. Even that job at a fast food place can teach things about human nature which could later be applied to writing. The zig zag path appears random and goal less. Sometimes even to the person who is traveling it. The zig zag person may take longer to arrive at a measurable success than the straight approach, but the zig zag can still arrive somewhere that they want to be.
I’m not a zig zag person. I tend to head straight for my goals, but I have many goals I’m pursuing simultaneously. I can only push one forward at a time, but I’ve gotten very deft at switching tracks very quickly. It still takes me longer to arrive where I want to be than it would be if I were more focused, but it is the method that feels natural to me.