You need to be aware of the right direction you need to maintain and must have the plan that keeps you moving in this direction with confidence. You are moving in the right direction only if you are fulfilling/trying to fulfil all the following aims:
- Be financially elite.
- Be socially elite.
- Be academically elite.
- Give something back to society.
You need to choose directions in which you (an individual with unique abilities and skills, as is so with any individual) can achieve all these aims. One of the way of achieving this relies on division of priorities to broad categories of short term goals, medium term goals and long term vision seems to be one which reduces anxiety while helping achieve short term successes.
Goals and Vision
You need to develop a vision for your life which keeps you in the right direction. You need short term goals which keep you moving. You need medium term goals as a bridge between short term goals and vision. It is very important to realize that you need to spend majority of your energy in achieveing short term goals. Your experiences from achieving the goals will help form the vision and will materialize your medium term goals.
Long term vision
These are pretty much open ended items driven by your fantasy imagination about the state of affairs. Don't worry too much about organizing these. Few lists can be maintained which will help you form your vision:
- The type of things that you like. The things which when accomplished give you satisfaction. You will need to go through many outlining texts on various topics to get the flavours of various fields and what turn people on in these.
- Available financial opportunities and how some of these associate with the list mentioned above. For example, employment opportunities, startup opportunities of various levels.
- Related medium term goals. These act as a source of creating short term goals with reasonable epectations.
These act as a source of creating short term goals with reasonable epectations. These set an upper limit to the depth you need to go in any task setting reasonable and useful limits for the same. If a short term goal sprouts from long term vision, they will pretty much remain open ended with dogmatic expectations.
As an example, if “learning Calculus and Linear Algebra” sprouts from long term vision of “Mathematical Excellence” then you won't be able to move a single step forward. If you set your medium term goal as “Ramp up in Mathematics through textbook learning” and “Collect the state of affairs in various topics of interest”, “Develop analog/RF designer profile for job interviews” then you will make progress.
Short term goals
At a given time you can work only on a handful things. Also, always having a very broad plan in mind will just confuse you. So, it is best to precipitate few short term goals from the medium term goals which need to be acted upon at a time. These are specific tasks which have a standard procedure to fulfil.
Once a thing is assigned as a short term goal, it needs to be done. You cannot bargain to put these goals aside. You must keep planning but the execution of short term goals must be the highest priority. You need to be aware that since these are standard procedure tasks, they can be finished in reasonable time so you don't need to worry about subsiding these.
Be confident that these short term goals are necessary for success. Also, remember that only by devoting time to short term goals, will you find yourself in a better position.
On being successful in this society
I see many people who are financially elite but nothing more than that. These guys seem to be having control of everything because they don't have anything better to do or that they cannot do anything better. Although doing any work is good but still some things are more dignified than others. So, being financially successful by doing anything is not sufficient. If a person achieves success by following a set pattern run-of-the-mill approach then that success is not comparable to the one which is achieved by hard work, innovation and creativeness.
But it is extremely necessary to realize that it holds for every other point as well. Just being socially or academically elite isn't sufficient as well. If you are just sitting in your sofa, drooling lazily over topics then it is no good either.
Few Nice ways of thinking
These are few thought patterns which motivate you in whatever you want to do.
Caveman pattern
Imagine that you are a caveman. Now, you can go around doing beastly things like everyone else or you can take the first step towards development, improvement of life. Or that if you see a black and white” movie and imagine what all got done by humans to get us to our present stage.
This boosts “give back to society”
Commonman pattern
Think as if you are just a small part of the society (which you actually are and need to realize) and are on your own. You obviously desire to improve your life and thus come up with ways to improve your profile or ways to earn better. No common man can support life without hours of hard work. The quality and quantity of time spent must be substantial.
This boosts “being financially elite” and “being socially elite”.
Productmaker pattern
You can easily appreciate the better product from the inferior one, be it a tablet, a painting or a car. You need to develop high quality results in the same spirit. These are the products you are out there to sell.
Startup creator pattern
It's a simple recipe for generating startup ideas. Just see what problems do you (or anyone) face and what solutions are desired. Just develop and sell the solution.
