Use Your ‘Desired Future’ To Set Goals For The Next 6 Months

Recent research suggests that 67% of people do not have a written plan for life.¹⁾ I’m sure many have also not set goals for the next six months.

A few years ago I would have been one of these people. Then I learnt something that changed my approach to goal-setting.

The lesson was based on a brilliant distinction I now think about each day.

This is how I used to think about the future.

It was as if the future was some point on the horizon.

I thought about it occasionally.

I knew I’d get there…someday.

But in many ways, I let the future define me, rather than me define it.

I related to the future as “something” that would just arrive.

In doing this, you could say the way I thought about the future, was like an extension of the present. And because the present was based on actions I repeated every day, the future would probably look the same. Let’s call this the ‘probable future’.

The probable future is like being on a train going to a defined destination. It’s taking you somewhere, maybe even somewhere you need or want to go. But if you’ve caught that train every day for months, maybe even years, you might not think to go a different way.

When I thought of that probable future, my thinking was not intentional. I wasn’t thinking I had a huge role in creating it. I certainly was not thinking the future was up to me and that I could intentionally design it.

The real insight came when I did a post-graduate degree, in the form of two simple words – ‘desired future’.

The desired future is what you see as your ideal and preferred path. It’s an alternative to what’s probable. It’s a way to ‘course correct’ and change the destination of our lives. It is an incredible distinction for us as individuals, as well as teams and even companies.

Whether we call it a ‘desired future’, ‘preferred future’, or ‘intentional future’, the idea is the same…to set a course purposefully toward an objective that reflects our deeper goals.

This can have a profound impact.

Consider this – according to strategist, Dr Joseph Voros, “the Apollo Moon Landing, for example, was a preferred future of President Kennedy which began as merely possible…because the knowledge did not yet exist at that time to achieve the goal.” ²⁾

I know, it seems so simple and common sense that it’s almost unremarkable. But when we start to intentionally think about and work toward a desired future, it changes everything.

4 Tools To Get To Your Desired Future

You have four tools available to you right now to pursue your desired future.

#1. Imagination
When we have an image of a desired future, that picture may be blurry. It might need better definition. We can bring it into high resolution. For that we need our imagination. We have to build out the future in our mind’s eye. What are we doing, seeing and feeling in that future? Who is with us? How has our situation changed? Building out that future in our thinking is one of the most powerful ways to make it real.

#2. Hope
When we’re imagining a desired future – whether it’s for 6 months or 6 years, we have to engage our sense of hope. Hope is one of the most underrated and not often talked about emotions. Yet for us to have any motivation toward a desired future, it’s because we have hope to improve our situation and that of others. It is a very real and inspiring energy source for personal action.

#3. Back-casting
‘Back-casting’ requires us to place ourselves in the future, look back and imagine what milestones have occurred to get us toward that future.

For example. if your future involves living in a new house, somewhere along the way you will have saved for a deposit.

These milestones are like pin-pointing the stops on a train line. Back-casting identifies the major stops to get to your desired future.

According to strategist Andy Hines, “the advantages of working backwards are that it is a fun way to explore the future….it avoids the constraints of thinking linearly forward from today, by first rushing rapidly toward the future, then working backwards.”³⁾

#4. Action
Finally, we need massive action.

Taking action requires consistent and repeated efforts. As you take action toward your desired future, you may find the steps you take are different from what you foresaw when you back-casted.

Things may not go as planned. You may need to take a side step now and then.

If you keep your desired future in focus, and pursue it persistently, you will achieve it.

Set Goals For Your Next 6 Months

You can apply these steps to set goals for the next six months.

Where do you want to be, what do you want to achieve, how will you know you’ve succeeded?

This method complements goal setting techniques, such as SMART and HARD goals, as well as other detailed goal setting frameworks.

In the book Principles, Ray Dalio ⁴⁾ says:

Define your desired future. Imagine it in every detail. Backcast and define the steps that will get you there.

Today, start one action that will take you forward. And then every day for the next six months, do another action to take you further.

You might even approach these actions as small experiments to rapidly expand your talents.

I guarantee you, if you do these things, you’ll be amazed by the difference you create. And these very steps will also help you to think like a strategist.

While many of the concepts in this article are based on my lessons when studying a post-graduate degree, I was reminded of this thinking in a book by John Braddock, A Spy’s Guide To Strategy. If you would like a guide to extending concepts of a ‘desired future’ with elements of strategy, it is a great read.

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