Life Planning and Goal Setting   By Jen Davies

Retirement planning

Many of us go to work every day and wonder what it’s all for. Besides the pay cheque, the work just doesn’t seem to offer much reward, and we sometimes wax philosophical. Will we have mattered to the world in the long run? How will we be remembered? What lasting impression are we leaving? There are also only so many hours in a week that we can volunteer and still feel rewarded. We sometimes wonder if we must change our daily scene completely, by changing jobs or changing careers, in order to feel appropriately rewarded.

Likewise, as retirement approaches, we often feel like we are prepared with the practical ends of our lives: our living arrangements are sorted out, we have the financial resources we require and a budget laid out, and we have a date picked out. But what are we going to do with all that time? For the first few months, during the so-called "honeymoon" phase when a person enters a new life circumstance, most of us are relaxed and feel like we are on holiday. Some of us continue to enjoy that feeling until a ripe old age! For many others, especially people who have had highly driven careers, it happens that we begin to feel restless. Bored. Useless and unwanted. Some retirees even begin to wonder whether they should have retired at all, and begin to ask questions like the ones above. These are questions about our values, and how our current activities are not a match with our values, or what is important to us as people.

A simple pause to engage in some self-reflection and planning can help us to sort out these values questions, and make small (or large, as desired) changes to our lives to allow us to fit our behaviour with our values.

About.com makes some excellent recommendations on preparing for retirement and making the transition into retirement less of a shock to your system. First of all, they recommend thinking about retirement as the beginning of something new. At work, they recommend delegating work to others where you can, instead of taking on more. Outside of work, they recommend developing interests or hobbies outside of work, and getting back in touch with friends and family. Retirement is not an easy process for everyone, and About.com observes that it is all right to find it difficult.

Planning and goal setting are advisable at any stage of your life, because having a plan or goal in mind allows you to make decisions with a framework or set of criteria already in place. Ever been stymied, torn between options when facing a decision? If you had had a particular end or objective in sight, that decision likely would have been easier. Having a goal or a plan also ensures that your energy is spent wisely, in ways that reward you.

Retirees volunteering

Having goals and a plan makes interruptions in your work and personal life a little easier to handle as well. For instance, illness may require that we take a significant amount of time off work or away from our daily routine. Without a plan, we may feel like the time away is a waste, and we may begin to feel lost and directionless. The barrage of stuff we were facing every day was substituting as a plan, and without it, we begin to realize that we do not have a direction. Even time spent in recuperation from illness can be well used to prepare for or even continue to work on your personal or professional goals and plans.

“I haven’t the time to set goals or plan,” you might say. “I run from the time I get up to the time I go to bed!” Your life may certainly feel that way, and if you do not enjoy that kind of lifestyle, that is an extra reason to step back and do some planning. An Activity Log (like the one available at MindTools.com) will help you to sort out what you are actually doing in a day. It may be that you can go about your daily tasks more efficiently, in order to make some time for goal setting and planning. You could also try MindTools.com’s Five Steps for Effective Scheduling, which focus on prioritizing your tasks in order to use your time in a way that allows you to complete what you need to complete, and not become lost in minutiae or tasks that are not important.

Active retirees

If you are the kind of person who likes a structured self-assessment, try StartupNation.com’s Life Plan. It asks you to rate your quality of life, identify the things that you really love doing and what you do well, and asks you to outline a personal manifesto that discusses your values and personal mission. The last stage of the Life Plan is, of course, setting a few short-term, medium-range, and long-term goals that will put you on the proverbial path to achieving your personal mission. Your Life Plan is a fluid document – you should keep it out where you can see it, and revisit it every once in a while to revise it as your values and mission change.

The Career Development eManual at the University of Waterloo (www.cdm.uwaterloo.ca - Step 3) offers another model for decision-making that is useful for goal setting. It outlines a recursive process, recommending that planning and decision-making that moves from vision-to-action, and then back from action-to-vision. To establish the initial vision, they recommend that you visualize what you would like your life to look like, or what kind of legacy you would like to leave, and for whom. When you have this “big picture” in mind, you should write it down.  Many people are very surprised at how clear a vision they have for themselves, when they just take the time to put it down on paper! With a clear vision in mind, we can proceed to planning action aimed at achieving that vision. The eManual offers a form for laying out a goal in small steps, to make it more manageable, in addition to identifying the purpose of the goal (which is easy to forget), and timelines for completing each small step of the goal. Anyone who has ever been on a diet knows how hard it is to lose 10 pounds, but losing a few ounces is easy. A few ounces at a time add up to 10 pounds over a few months, and a few ounces is a much more achievable goal than 10 pounds.

Achievability is an important factor in setting any goal. I hear many people say things like, “I want to change the world!” when they talk about their career. Changing the world is a wonderful goal – but much like the guide How to Eat an Elephant, “changing the world” must be handled in small bites. These small bites, or small goals, should be small and SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. The aspects of SMART goals that I see forgotten most often are measurability and timely. It is very important that you have a way of knowing when your goal has been achieved; otherwise, you may continue to pound away at it, not realizing it is done!  That is why “changing the world” is not a SMART goal.  Additionally, we should attach a deadline to any goal, to ensure that we continue to work toward it.

Goals and plans are also much more powerful when they are visible, for example, posted up on the wall, and when they are shared, for example, with a group of friends or with family. They could ask you about your goals, and even if they do not, somehow the sharing of goals makes you accountable for them. Keeping them visible and ‘out there’ will also encourage you to revisit them, and keep them current as your priorities and values shift.

All of this said, there are many of us who are more comfortable taking life day by day, and who do not experience anxiety or discomfort around planning and decision-making. These philosophical questions do not keep you up at night, and you feel like you know where you are going. Your daily activities are a match with your values and personal mission in life. If this is you, you have my sincere envy!

RESOURCES

“5 Ways to Prepare for Retirement” from About.com:
http://retireplan.about.com/od/lifestyles/a/transitionplan.htm

MindTools.com

Activity Log: www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_03.htm

5 Steps to Effective Scheduling: www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_07.htm

Goal-setting: www.mindtools.com/page6.html

Decision-Making in general:www.mindtools.com/pages/main/newMN_TED.htm for resources on decision-making in general.

StartupNation.com’s Life Plan: www.startupnation.com/steps/55/3751/1/create-life-plan.htm

TopAchievement.com on SMART goals: www.topachievement.com/smart.html

About the author:

Jennifer Davies, MA, CCC, was born in Moose Factory, Ontario, Canada where the majority of Canadian moose are produced, or so she claims. She is, of course kidding, but she developed an eccentric sense of humour growing up in the far north, in a remote town that cannot be reached by road. For junior high, her family moved to Timmins, Ontario, where Jen enjoyed a number of very enjoyable summer jobs including acting as a tourism guide out of the local Chamber of Commerce, and writer/interviewer of "success stories" for
a project with the Ontario March of Dimes. Higher education drew her to the south and east, to Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. There she obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology, and then went on to complete her Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology, with a complete focus on humans, at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. It was there, earning the designation Canadian Certified Counsellor (CCC), she realized that she had a passion  for  career-related  issues.

Most recently a Career Advisor at Conestoga College, Jen has also assisted students of all ages at triOS College and the University of Toronto with achieving their career goals. She is currently pursuing a long-time dream of teaching conversational English in South Korea. Jennifer Davies encourages all job seekers to be creative and flexible with their searches and career paths.