Where would you like to be in X amount of time from now? What are your long-term goals and what are you doing to achieve them?
Say that you want to work as a CEO of a multinational company. I believe we all agree that it takes more than merely sending CVs for relevant job openings.
You need to have already worked for about a decade in positions with increasing responsibility. You need to make sure that you keep up to date with everything that is going on in the market and the world around you. You need to ensure that you will continuously sharpen your professional skills. It also takes about a million other smaller things, like knowing the right people for example. Sending the CV is just the last in many other and potentially more important steps.
Let’s examine a real-life example from Cyprus: For years, all of our governments have been declaring that it’s one of their top priorities to increase the use of means of public transport from the local population. In my view, the most effective way of doing this, is to persuade people to live in apartment blocks, instead of houses. This way each bus line, train station, etc. will be effectively servicing much more people, thus being exponentially more viable. I don’t know exactly how the current government intends to achieve this objective of increasing the popularity of public transportation. But I was shocked when I read in the news the other day, that a public organization that we have here for the development of cheap housing for those who can’t afford it, completed the construction of new houses. Not flats, houses. Ironically, those who are the easiest to convince to use public transportation, are exactly those who live in those kinds of units: Lower income families.
And so, it appears that successive governments here in Cyprus declare targets (for which I am sure they make some planning) but seem to miss some small, albeit important steps along the way of achieving them.
In the same sense, when setting targets in your personal life and planning steps to achieve them, it’s important to make sure that you are not missing any seemingly minute, but just as well important step.
