The dreams that you honor and want to pursue, you need to keep those in sight at all times.

Dreams that are achievement-oriented do not come true in a flash. You need to work at them. Every small action of yours in the current time contributes to the bigger picture of the future, with or without your intention.

That is why, for your immediate or short-term plan to be of some consequence, it should be in line with what you want to achieve in the long-term.

Here comes the dilemma...

On most occasions, we do not have a long-term plan. We do not always take time to 'dream' far out in the future that gives us something to work towards!

When you have dreamt well enough, and you know where you want to go, you need to figure out the 'route' to get there. You must be able to mark the 'route' with milestones that are relatively smaller targets to keep you on course leading to a bigger objective.

As you proceed, the milestones that are nearer are easier to 'see' and assimilate.  Those farther away on the timeline are still 'fuzzy' until they come nearer with time. But how do you always know you are moving in the right direction? Well, you don't, until you develop this art.

This art is based on the ‘Principle of Abstraction’.  The mechanism and practice of abstraction reduces and factors out details so that one can focus on a few concepts at a time.

Let me recount to you a fun exercise I indulged in a few months back. Last winter I had planned to drive from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Although it is the straightest and the easiest route one can drive on, I thought of getting an 'overview' of my journey with Google Earth software. Those familiar with Google Earth would know that this software has the ability to show the route from one point to another at various scales. A route spanning multiple cities or states, can be shown as a stretch of about 6 inches or less on your desktop by 'increasing the view-altitude'. As you reduce the altitude, you reduce the scale and can 'zoom in' to see details of the route at various levels.

I chose to 'fly' over the route using Google Earth. While I was flying, I would often raise the altitude (zoom out) to check if the direction in which I was moving was leading me to my destination. This is the very essence of planning!

If you can zoom out to get an overview of next 5 years, you have a planning horizon of 5 years. With practice and focus, one can learn to set one’s sights on the coming 10 or even 15 years. Let us say if you plan for the next 15 years, you should also develop the ability of ‘zooming in and out’ to gauge how the next 10 years, the next 5 years and the next 1 year look like. Does what you are doing now lead you to where you want to go 5, 10 and 15 years from now?

Remember the more you ‘zoom in’, the more you are obligated to carve the details. The more you ‘zoom out’; the better is the bird’s eye view of the path you have undertaken, and the higher is the ‘Level of Abstraction’. The ability to zoom out to see the bigger picture is the ability to achieve higher abstraction.

This practice of abstraction helps you to vet your plan for its relevance and efficacy on a number of planning horizons i.e., a look-ahead level of 1 or 5 or 10 or 15 years!

Once you realize the importance of maintaining a rolling window of planning horizons, it will be easier for you to spell out the near-term and long-term objectives.

Take time to ruminate on this concept, and stay tuned for my next post in which I will run an illustration of this concept.

Until then, stay strong!