I believe that everyone should have a written life plan and that plan should be broken down to cover 5 time periods; the 1 month, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years and 10 years plan. In each of these time periods you will have to clearly define points covering career, financial and personal goals.

The easiest way to start your plan is to take out 3 sheets of paper. Label them: Career, Finance and Personal. Write out every goal you can think of, under the appropriate category, that you want to achieve. Don’t put a time limit on them. You can include taking a long weekend at a friend’s cottage next month and your desire to sail around the world after you retire. Include paying off small debts and your retirement goals. At this point, don’t edit your thoughts and don’t worry about the time line by which you hope to accomplish them, just write whatever comes to mind. Take your time, review, add or remove things. Think each goal through and make sure it is something that you are willing to work towards.

Don’t worry if your papers are a mess because you will be rewriting them anyway. Next time I want to break down each category; Career Goals, Financial Foals and Personal Goals, to give you a better idea exactly what you should include on those lists.