As one does, I recently planned what I wanted to do this year. I realized how much my approach to this changed over the years, especially regarding goals I want to achieve. I wanted to write about that a little. Why, you ask? Because I set out to write a certain amount of blog posts this year. And hence, we now have to work through this post about goals so I can achieve my goal. Hooray.
Okay, goals. If you look around the internet, you will read over and over again that goals are important. I think this is true: If you don‘t know in which direction to run, you may end up somewhere but chances are your just running in circles. But I also don‘t think that you have to have a 10 year plan you follow in order to come by things you enjoy. I think goals are allowed to and definitely should change.
You constantly learn new things. You learn about directions you can possibly go in your journey that you did not even know existed when you started. It would be foolish to not at least evaluate the new directions and change course if they interest you.
For example, when I finished school there were a few broader directions I was interested in: Writing, photography and designing things on the web. I played around in all directions a little and decided that I will mainly focus on the web thing. I studied in the informatics field (because I was to lazy for the art school assignments you have to do to get accepted) and had in mind that I wanted to be a designer in an agency. So during and after my time in university, I did just that. I enjoyed it until I didn‘t. I then noticed that I also like programming and it turns out a decent programmer with an eye for design is really valuable in small teams. So I did this for a while. Then I realized that there are people working on products and they don‘t have to start a new project every 3 months and I decided I wanted to do that. This is where I am now.
All of this happened over a span of roughly ten years . I could not have planned to be where I am today 10 years ago, because I did not know that place existed. Likewise, I cannot plan where I will be in 5 years or 10 because many of the places I could end up I either don‘t know about or they don‘t exist yet. I think making concrete plans for the long term is really limiting. I have a rough feeling of which directions feel good to go and which not. I will try to go where it feels good. And if something interesting comes by on the way, I will take a turn and see how that feels.