In other words, a roadmap of what you want to achieve in life.

Before travelling, I listened to a number of lectures from a personal development author Jim Rohn, had attended courses on leadership and read a few books on the subject.

Definitely not claiming expertise in this, but I firmly believe everyone should carve out a little time for a visioning process. It opened my eyes and helped organise a number of random thoughts which accumulated over the years.

Some quick pre-requisites;

1) Find a place which is completely free of distractions. No crying kids and phone turned off. If you can be in a remote location it’s even better – it’s imperative to have clear head space.

2) You’ll need magic white board paper (ideally) and a pack of multi-coloured board markers.

3) You will need a minimum of 4 hours. Ideally over a few days if really unsure of your passion.

Then, do the following;

1) List a minimum of 50 things that you want to accomplish or achieve over the next 10 years on the board. Can be little or big, though don’t restrict yourself. It’s also across all facets of life – religion, health, wealth, family, everything you can think of.

2) Once you’ve hit 50+ goals, then next to each goal, you need to add the no. 1, 3, 5, or 10 which is the number of years you think you need to achieve this.

3) Now, try and group similar goals together. Ideally in 5-8 overarching groups – give those a header each. e.g. Studying a Masters in X and learning a new language can come under an ‘Increase knowledge’ heading.

4) Put them in an excel sheet or even better, something like MS-ToDo and review them regularly and prioritise as necessary. Very simplistic, but surprisingly it worked for me.

Now, a few things you need to think about during this process;

– Try and identify things you are most *passionate* about. This is vital to the above as your passion and ideals should ideally drive this whole process.

– If you are really struggling with honing in on a passion – then write a list of 3/4 options and literally argue with yourself about that which is most important. Talk yourself in or out of different ‘passions’ and why one trumps the other. This is really important, because if you can get this right now, you won’t be second-guessing 10 years down the line in the wrong career.

– Feel free to note down on another sheet what are some of your greatest accomplishments? What do you dislike doing? These can help trigger and validate ideas that go into your top 50.

There is a lot more to this, but this is a quick overview for social media. Hope it is of some benefit IA.

Note: The above is a quick DIY approach to visioning. There are a number of visioning/leadership courses one can go on which would be guided by experienced mentors, important frameworks and more collaboration which of course would be much deeper. As with anything though, it depends on personal circumstance.