Extremely long range goals

[u/flyingsqwirrel219]

Has anyone else considered a bullet journal set up for very long term goals? Something like mapping out an entire career, or retirement goals started at a young age, or something similar. These types of goals just couldn’t be threaded across dozens and dozens of individual journals, so dailies and weeklies are right out the window. Monthly spreads would probably be too often. I’ve been thinking about the structure of a journal to organize this and am having trouble visualizing how it would work.

[u/justanother1014]

I would set this up as a new journal and then work on breaking down those big goals into short term sprints. For most people it’s too hard to figure and plan a retirement savings goal but they could do a monthly percent of income and track growth over the years.

Maybe start something like a 10 year plan and decide what you want life to look like in 2035?

[u/flyingsqwirrel219 → u/justanother1014]

I’m thinking of the exercise not just as a tracker or task list, but something much bigger. So one example would be “To have $XX,XXX annual passive income by retirement at age 55.”

So the goal is broken down into sub-goals (savings targets by year, investment return targets by year, rental property acquisitions by decade, etc), which are further broken down into steps that can be migrated into annual bujos.

But it could be for career growth as well. Or for health if it’s an issue.

Knowing we can only track what we can measure, and that it’s easy to lose focus on very long term goals, it seems like this wouldn’t be wasted effort. The compounding nature of investments, professional growth, and the like, mean that ultra long term goals need as much attention as annual goals do. The reflection would be quarterly or semiannually instead of daily and monthly.

[u/-flaneur-]

I've done / am doing something like this.

I use a very large art sketch book (like 1' by 2') spiral bound with very thick paper. Then I drew a line along the centre lenghtwise (ie, a 2' line straight across the middle). The coils will be by your left hand.

The straight line will continue all through the art book.

Count the number of pages you have. Lets say 80. So you can now devote one page per year. Obviously, the number of pages per year will depend on the number of pages you have and your estimated life expectancy.

Now you want to come up with your life categories. (Examples : education, work, relationships, hobbies, travel, finances, etc.. You get the picture. If something is super important to you it can also be it's own category of course. No rule here but I would keep the categories at around 10 max.. You can always have subcategories).

Colour-code the categories. This makes things easier to see at a glance.

Now, divide each year into months. Just make a little mark perpendicular to your 2' line, evenly spaced for the months left in your life. Also, at this point make little year labels too.

Now, fill it in. Create your timeline of goals (using the appropriate colour) for the rest of your life.

For example. Let's say that in May of 2036 you want to have read 500 books. You flip through to the part of the line that will correspond to May of 2036 and draw a perpendicular line (up or down, doesn't matter - it will depend on where you have space) and make you little check-box (or whatever) stating "Read 500 books".

I hope you can visualize this - I realize that this sounds a bit confusing. lol

In the end you will have 80 sheets with a thick line running horizontally that you can flip through and will be a timeline of your life. Perpendicular from this thick line there will be colour coded lines (at the appropriate months and year) detailing your goals at that point in time.

Anyway, that was my plan. Hope it gives you an idea you can adapt that will suit you.

[u/Knitmeapie]

While I love goal setting both long and short term, the super long term isn't something I like to track like that. There are so many variables in life that you won't expect. It seems like a recipe for disappointment. The things I thought I wanted 10, 20 years ago are not in line with my life or my goals now. I think, if I shackled myself to something like that, I might avoid being honest with myself about needing to adapt or change my outlook.

[u/flyingsqwirrel219 → u/Knitmeapie]

That is certainly one valid point of view. Another, perhaps, would be to see the growth that occurs from the changes wrought by unforeseen circumstances in life. There is also a risk associated with not having a goal, or a plan to achieve that goal. Or worse, to have those, but to fail to keep an eye on them from the whirlwind of daily life. It was just a thought.

[u/Greedy-Test-556]

I've used my BuJo for notes when I'm studying something.

Here is a link to a book I read 20 years ago. If I recall correctly, it had a very useful series of written exercises to identify what you want out of life, and to develop a plan to get therre.

https://a.co/d/6UUONLS

I Would definitely use my BuJo to work through the plan.

I would definitely have a thread that spanned 20 years of journals.

[u/Fun_Apartment631]

The end game for this stuff for me is really that you end up with actionable tasks and projects living in your Future and Monthly Logs. The more special collections I'm supposed to scan regularly, the more likely I am to just lose things. Projects go better because I cross-reference things.

Retirement, if you're an American, you pretty much have to map or you're not going to have a lot of choices as you age out of working. It can be pretty overwhelming though.

Honestly the Bullet Journal aspect isn't that relevant. Like you can put it in your grid notebook and use the bullets, but the content is going to be the same. It's just like any other Collection at that point.

I have some notes in my computer looking at what contributions I need to make to my 401(k) to have choices later. That trickles down to how I budget. It hasn't informed what mortgage I choose yet but it's easy to see how it could.

I earned my graduate degree before I knew about Bullet Journal but that ended up benefitting heavily from a tool. I didn't know that it was called at the time but I did an Arrow Diagram showing how my required courses interacted. Then I was able to spread them out across a timeline. I was pretty much able to take my classes, I mostly evened out my course load, and I didn't have many nasty surprises. Win! Once you spread the courses across a timeline it's pretty much a Gantt chart. I did that in Excel but would probably involve my Bullet Journal if I had it to do over, especially laying out coursework on my Future Log and tracking assignments in my Monthly Logs.