Life plan. How to make a life plan: detailed instructions

In the world around us, there are more successful and less successful people. There are those who have realized themselves in many areas and understand what they want to achieve in the future. And there are those who. And all this is our own choice.

Meanwhile, you can learn to control your destiny. To do this, we need to master the art of correctly setting priorities and realizing ourselves in all areas of life that we need to be happy and move forward. How to learn this?

The first secret: there are no universal recipes that suit everyone! But this does not mean that you cannot use the experience accumulated and tested by other people. On the contrary, this is where you need to start. And you can adjust and adapt the advice of coaches, business trainers and psychologists to your needs later.

Main and secondary goals

Do you have the most important, main goal in life? And the most important goal this year? Surprisingly English word Priority, which arose in the 15th century, did not exist for more than five hundred years plural! It seemed right and normal to people to have a single, most important goal. This situation continued until the twentieth century. Now, in any company and at any meeting, employees are given ten or more priority tasks just for the current day.

If you let this principle into your life, then the feeling of being a squirrel running in a wheel will remain with you until retirement. Learn to reduce the number of priorities and clearly understand what your the main task- for starters, at least for today.

At the same time, immediately try to understand whether this is your goal, or one imposed on you from the outside - by friends, relatives, management, and so on. In our society there is so much contact with other people that it is difficult to distinguish between what we ourselves want to do and what society imposes on us. Therefore often more than a half time is spent on matters that are not important to ourselves, but are urgent and important to others.

This does not mean that you should refuse to help other people. But it is important to realize that these are not your tasks, and you are doing them, voluntarily putting off your own affairs for later.

Five steps to manage your time

The principles of time management are extremely popular now, which make life more meaningful, organized and harmonious. Volumes have been written about time management, and yet a huge number of psychologists and coaches continue to teach people how to properly manage their time.

Please note that it is much more important not to talk about it, but to start putting it into practice. own life at least some principles of time management, and you yourself will understand which techniques are suitable for you and which are not. These principles are quite simple, but it is important to implement them systematically.

First What needs to be done is to highlight the same priorities that have already been discussed. In practice, this is difficult, so you need to make a list of the most important, global goals. And then filter it by importance and urgency. This must be done. Here's what consultant psychologist Victoria Timofeeva told a Mir 24 correspondent about this:

“If you don't plan for your future, if you don't have a goal or a plan, then you are like a boat drifting aimlessly on the ocean, hoping to end up somewhere good location. Agree, it’s stupid to wait for this. Just like GPS guides you to your destination, you need your own internal GPS to guide you.”

Second step is to break down large plans into a list of smaller tasks that can actually be accomplished. Don't delay getting started great job! When the idea is voluminous, it scares you, but as soon as you start doing the first of the steps, the path to the final appears as a list of quite feasible tasks.

Third step- this is a refusal to do non-essential things. Focus only on the main thing! This is called the Pareto principle. It says that 80% positive results we get by putting in only 20% of the effort. And all the rest of our energy is spent on completing the remaining small list of tasks. Therefore, we need to do only what we can be effective at. And what remains is better to outsource, delegate, or even discard as not the most important.

Fourth- be sure to complete one or two pending tasks a day.

And finally fifth- evaluate your effectiveness and improve it all the time. Don’t give up long-term tasks halfway, but bring them to their logical conclusion and set new goals.

That's all. Although each of the points can be expanded into several lectures. But instead of endlessly studying theory, it is better to take the techniques invented by other people and try to apply them yourself. You will quickly understand what suits you and what doesn't. At the end of the day, managing your time is just a skill. But it makes our lives much more meaningful and structured.

Plans for the year, for the week, for the month

In parallel with long-term planning, which still needs to mature, it is worth starting to create more understandable and real plans for a day and a week. Ideally, you should have interconnected plans for the year, for the month, for the week, for the day.

Plans for next year It’s best to write at the end of the previous one, but in January, of course, it’s not too late to think about it. First, formulate the main goals and mark the main events. When will they happen? Now start planning your vacation! Include in your annual plan your vacation and where you will spend it, as well as all vacations, trips and trips. Now decide when you should start organizing them in order to buy the best and cheapest tickets and book hotels.

Your annual plan should also include something new that you plan to do, be it learning a language, losing weight or training, changing jobs or renovating an apartment. Designate important dates, and not only related to work or study, but also to hobbies and personal life.

Monthly plans are written in the same way, but with more detailed study deadlines. They must be written at the end of the previous month, and then they can be corrected, as, indeed, annual plans- This is fine!

Make sure that the first monthly plan reflects those global goals, which are in the annual. The sooner you start implementing them, the better! It is better to immediately assess the “scale of the disaster” and understand what approximately a tenth of the disaster is that needs to be done in the first month. Precisely the tenth, and not the twelfth, since there will still be vacations and vacations, during which you will be busy with relaxation and not with business.

Don't forget friends' birthdays, trips to relatives and other visits. Write down all plans on the calendar. Find out which scheduling apps you're comfortable using. Try some electronic and paper organizers or other planning tools.

Plans for the week are made on Sunday evening, or, if it is more convenient for you, on Friday. This is where you need to clearly filter out unimportant matters! How to fill your week is not a question. But how to find time for the main thing? Therefore, start with the main thing. Write in the plan what moves you towards the priority goals that you formulated in the annual plan.

Decisively include in your weekly plan what you were going to start, but put off or were afraid of. Want to exercise three times a week? It's time to set training days and times!

It’s better to reflect in your weekly plan everything that will require your time and mental resources in order to properly distribute them and weed out everything unnecessary or unnecessary. Don’t forget to leave time in your plan for communication with children and family, for meeting friends, pleasure and relaxation!

Daily planning is the most important. After all, our lives are made up of days. This means that it is at this stage that we project all our future successes and failures. The best time to plan your day is the evening of the previous day. So you already set yourself in advance that you will cope with everything and will accomplish everything planned, and you wake up immediately with this knowledge.

Photo: Alan Katsiev (Mir TV and Radio Broadcasting Company)

Place the tasks on your list in order of priority and do only the most urgent and important first. If you leave the hardest part for later, it will plunge you into a state of stress. It’s better to quickly deal with everything difficult or unpleasant and breathe out.

True, some psychologists argue that this strategy is not suitable for everyone. After all, you need to take your own biorhythms into account too. If you are a night owl and your peak activity occurs in the second half of the day, then perhaps it will turn out for you more effective tactics gradual increase in the complexity of the tasks performed. One way or another, your daily to-do list should always be at your fingertips. If at the end of the day all your to-dos were crossed out, it means your efficiency was at its best!

SMART - a technique that works wonders?

Life coach from Rostov-on-Don Dana Doronina shares her secrets with Mir 24 readers. One of the most effective, and at the same time simple, in its practical application she thinks SMART methodology, which is used in management, goal setting and, of course, planning. Here's what it's all about: Once you start managing your time and prioritizing, it's important to stay on top of the five aspects behind the acronym SMART.

S (Specific) – specificity . When making plans, you must clearly understand what it will look like final result, which you want to arrive at. For example, the goal “lose weight this month” is a vague goal. More correct wording- “lose 5 kg this month.”

M (Measurable) – measurability . You must define for yourself the criteria by which you will judge the implementation of your plan. Additionally, you can set lower and upper limits for yourself - minimum indicators (below which you cannot fall in fulfilling the plan) and maximum (your best result).

A (Attainable) - reachability . At the stage of determining achievability, it is necessary to answer the question: “Is the task set realistic for me?” For example, if you suffer from overweight and set a goal to lose 20 kg in a month. – then this goal falls into the category of unattainable. In this case, it is necessary to adjust it and replace it with a more achievable and realistic one. For example, lose 8 kg.

When working through the point of goal achievability, you also need to identify the tools and methods with which you can achieve this goal. In the example of losing weight, this could be the following options: visit a nutritionist, start running in the morning, change your diet, take certain medications, sign up for a massage. Your task is to evaluate all the resources that you can theoretically use to achieve your goal. Once you have analyzed them, you will need to choose the ones that you can actually put into practice.

R (Relevant) - significance . When determining the significance of a goal, ask yourself: “Do I really want to get this result?” Maybe this is not your goal and you will only waste your time and energy. Also analyze how this goal is consistent with your other plans, those that were set earlier. Doesn't it conflict with them, won't it disturb the spiritual comfort of your loved ones?

T (Time-bound) - time indicator. The difference between a project and a dream and a simple desire is that the project has a clearly defined period of time in which you will implement it. This means that you need to indicate the start date of work on the project and the date of its completion.

According to Life coach Dana Doronina, her clients who used this technique short time received results that led them to new round personal growth.

Tatiana Rubleva

Are you tired of wandering through life without a goal? Then it's time for you to start planning. Life is very interesting, and you can live it in a million different scenarios. It’s good when this thought occurs to young people. They have the opportunity to correct the mistakes of the past and transform their activities in accordance with their desires. How to write life plan which one will work? Read about it below.

True Desires

A person who decides to start living more meaningfully must sort out his desires. Life planning - difficult process. A person should give himself an hour of time, sit in a comfortable chair and write on a piece of paper everything that he wants to get from this life. At this stage, you should write everything indiscriminately and without any system. You can write about what you want to buy, where you want to go, or what you want to achieve. Have many items on your list. The more desires you have, the more interesting it will be to fulfill them.

When the writing stage is completed, you need to start filtering your goals. Many people cannot distinguish true desires from imposed ones. What is the difference? For example, you want to buy a new phone. Why do you need it? Is your old phone broken and you can't make calls? Then the desire to acquire new model smartphone will be justified. If you have a working phone in your hands, but you want a new one, since all your friends have already purchased the 10th iPhone model, and you only have the 8th, in this case the desire is not true. You only need a phone to improve your status. You should understand that such expensive toys will not make you happier. In a similar way all desires should be considered. Perhaps you want to get into music. If you have no hearing or voice, but you want to become a musician in order to conquer women's hearts, then nothing will work out for you. If you have loved music since childhood, but before today If you didn’t have the opportunity to buy a guitar and start practicing, then your desire is true and you can start realizing it.

Epitaph

Don’t be surprised, and especially don’t take this advice as cynicism. People rarely can understand the purpose of their life. To understand why you came into this world, you need to do one simple exercise. Write your epitaph. Do not perceive such an exercise as some kind of sacred action. This is just one of the stages of life planning. When a person thinks about death, his thoughts become clearer and he can clearly understand what he wants to achieve. You work as a salesperson in a store and think that you are absolutely happy. What will your grandchildren read on the monument? A woman lived a worthless life and left nothing in this world except her only child? There is nothing wrong if a woman wants to become a good wife and mother. But even in order to achieve this goal, you need to put in a lot of effort. A woman should create comfort in her home, raise several children and support her husband in everything. Then on her monument it will be possible to write: “She was an excellent wife and a wonderful mother.”

Think about what you would like to see on your monument? Perhaps you want to become an artist, writer, actor or director. It's never too late to start developing your potential. And you should start opening it with a couple of words written on a piece of paper that will help you understand what you want to achieve in this life.

Setting goals

Have you decided on your true desires and written an epitaph? Now is the time to set your goals. Where do you see yourself in 10 years? And in 20? One of simple techniques life planning is to write down all your goals in detail. These should not be desires, but goals. At this stage, there is no need to link plan items to specific date. Just describe everything you want to achieve. For example, you want to lose 10 kilograms, start jogging in the morning, buy a house by the sea, or go on vacation with your whole family to Turkey. Where do you get inspiration for setting goals? From your desires that you described above.

Do you have a large list that you want to start implementing today? There's no need to rush. First, you should assign to each item the exact date, which you plan to complete this or that project.

Life plan

A person must be aware of when and what exactly he wants to achieve. This is the basis of life planning. You cannot set goals in isolation from the date. If a person does not have a strict deadline, he will not try to complete the project on time. As a result, a task that could have been completed in a week ends up taking several months. To prevent this from happening, you must have a clearly formed How to start compiling it? For each goal you set earlier, you must assign a start date and an end date for a particular project. For example, you want to learn English, but you understand perfectly well that you are stuck at work right now. If you expect there will be less work in a month, plan to sign up for the next month language classes. You should do the same with the rest of your projects. For example, let's say you have a passion for learning to play the guitar. But you can't start classes now, and your English courses start next month. So, postpone your guitar lessons for six months. By that time, you will already be able to speak English tolerably, and you will have free time to implement a new lesson. Feel free to push back some goals by a year or three. If you really want something, you can achieve it in the allotted time. specific activity term.

Plan for the year

Once you have a list of life goals ready, it will be easy for you to choose those activities that will be implemented, studied and done this year. Why write down goals separately if they are already written down in one list? IN large volume information it is very easy to lose sight of something. And when the list fits on one A4 page, it will be easy to review every week. What does an example of life planning look like?

Learn to skate - 1.01-1.03.
Speak on English language - 1.01-1.06.
Run twice a week.
Build a yurt.
Relax at a mountain resort in Sochi.
Visit mom twice a week.
Watch 10 films from the list.
Read 5 books from the list.

You can have such a plan divided by seasons, or you can link it to each specific month. Remember that you need to calculate your strength soberly. Don't plan too much so that you can achieve everything you plan. You should always take into account force majeure situations and the fact that things may not go according to plan.

Desires

In addition to goals, a person will always have desires that are difficult to include in life planning. There may be a lot of time to implement small projects, but in order to correctly fulfill this or that desire, you need a successful coincidence of circumstances. What does this mean? For example, many people have the following desires:

Ride a camel.
Swim under a waterfall.
Pet the tiger.
Swim with dolphins.

If you live in the north, you are unlikely to be able to achieve such dreams in hometown. Therefore, you need to take into account that you can implement your plans, for example, on vacation or on a business trip. Therefore, when you plan to leave the city again, open your list and think about what you can do to tick the next item.

Purchases

If you are serious about setting goals and planning your life, then you need to write a list of what you would like to buy. Without such a list, it will be very difficult to plan your future expenses. Of course, you don't need to plan all your purchases. The list should include things that you cannot afford to buy with one salary. This could be expensive equipment, branded clothing or accessories, as well as vouchers and subscriptions. Think in advance about what and in what month you will buy. This way you will be able to live within your means, without going into debt and not squandering your savings aimlessly.

Prioritization

When planning your life goals, you need to Special attention prioritize. Sometimes a person wants to do everything at once. If a person chooses such a policy for himself, then nothing will work out for him. If a person focuses on one or at most three big things, then he can achieve great success in selected areas. So think about what you want to achieve first. There are always things that can be put off, and there will always be projects that should be completed today.

A person must be able to distinguish between important and urgent matters and find a balance between them. For example, your job urgently requires you to undergo advanced training, but you are also required to submit an annual report. First of all, you should make a report, and only then think about how to improve professionalism.

Planning tools

To organize and plan your life, you need to use either a paper notebook or notes on your phone. The second option is more convenient for those who always carry their smartphone with them. You can enter your affairs on paper, but it will be inconvenient to carry it with you all the time. For example, at a meeting with a client, you promised the person to find out or see something. It will be easy to record this information in an electronic diary. And your personal notebook with a schedule for business meeting definitely won't. You can write everything down on a piece of paper, but there is a very high chance that you will lose such information before you get to your office or home. Therefore, switch to taking notes on your phone, it’s convenient and practical.

Visualization

Are you visual by nature? Then a vision board will help you in planning your life. Such a board is often made by those people who lack internal motivation to achieve their goals. If you are used to giving up halfway, then be sure to make yourself a board. You need to attach clippings from magazines or pictures printed on a printer that will personify your dreams. For example, if you want to buy a car, print out a photo of it and pin it to your board. If you want to become a leader, print a photo of a confident leader and place it in the center of your board. Looking at bright pictures every day, you will strive to achieve your goals with great desire.

Planning a person's life is big job which every person living in this world must do. But writing a plan is not the same as making your dreams come true. What should be done to ensure that the goals are achieved?

Review your annual plan once a week and your life plan once a month. This will allow you to stay aware of your desires and get a boost of motivation to achieve your goals.
Summarize the day, week, month and year. When you focus on what you have achieved, you will be able to find intrinsic motivation to work on yourself.
Don't tell your friends and family about your plans. Let your friends be proud of your successes, but don’t bother with advice on how you should build your life.

Our lives are constantly changing. When you feel like you're just going with the flow, or you're questioning your priorities, creating a life plan can help change your situation. With a life plan, you can organize your life despite changes. In this article you will learn how to create your own life plan.

Steps

Part 1

Prioritization

Think about what your current role is. Every day we play different roles. Depending on our actions, during the day we can be “daughter”, “artist”, “student”, “girlfriend”, “cheese lover”, etc. Write your list on a piece of paper. Try to arrange these roles in in the right order, paying attention to their priority.
- Here are some examples of other roles (but of course this should not be limited to): Chef, Dog Walker, Brother, Photographer, Chef, Mentor, Traveler, Grandson, Thinker, etc.
Think about the role you would like to play in the future. Some, if not all, of the roles you currently have in your life you will likely want to continue to play in the future, such as continuing to be a “mother” or an “artist.” However, these roles are just names, and every person would want someone to use them to describe them at the end of their lives. Think about the negative roles you currently play - perhaps roles that you would like to cross off your list as you plan for your future.
- To create your list, think about what you would like to do in the future. Do you want to travel but have never done it before? If so, add the role of "traveler" to your future list.
Think about your motives. Why do you want to play these roles in the future? To create a life plan, you need to properly prioritize your life. To do this, think about the roles you want to continue playing, as well as the ones you want to add in the future. Think about why you want to play a certain role? Maybe you want to become a "father", then among your future goals write down your desire to have children with your partner, and give the child life.
- A simple way to figure out the reasons for your ambitions is this: imagine your own funeral (even though it's painful, it needs to be done, it really helps!) Who will attend it? What would you like people to say about you? Perhaps you would like to hear the most important words, for example, that you were an amazing mother or made an effort to help thousands of homeless animals.
Write down your priorities. Once you really understand your motivations, write them down. Making a list will help you stay organized as you begin to follow your plan.
- For example, the list might include: I am a 'sister' because I always want to be a support for my brother; I want to be a 'writer' because I will be able to write down the story of my grandparents, etc.
Think about your physical and emotional needs. What does it take to become who you want to be? For example, if you want to become an "Everest climber", you must be in good physical fitness and eat right. If you want to be a "friend", your emotional needs will be met if you surround yourself with loving people.

Part 2
Setting goals
1. Think about what goals you want to achieve throughout your life. Use your roles, priorities and needs and you will be able to understand what you really want in your life. Think about this list in terms of things you want to get done before you die? Remember that these should be goals that you really want to achieve, and not goals that others encourage you to achieve. If you need additional help, try to categorize your goals. Some examples of categories:
  - Career/Vocation; Society (family and friends); Finance, health, travel; Knowledge / Intelligence and Spirituality.
  - Example goal (according to category): become a famous architect; get married and have two children; earn enough money to give a good education children; stay in good shape; visit all continents; obtain a master's degree in architecture; visit the Buddhist temple Borobudur.
2. Write it down specific goals with specific dates. Once you have set a goal that you want to achieve in your life, such as academic degree, write it down, as well as the date by which you want to achieve your goal. Here are some goals that are less vague than those listed in the previous step:
  - Lose 5kg by June 2014.
  - Be accepted into master's program in Architecture by April 2015.
  - Travel to Indonesia to visit Borobudur Temple in 2016.
3. Think about how you will achieve your goals. To do this, you need to evaluate where you are right now. The steps you need to take depend on what you do in your currently. For example, to obtain a master's degree in architecture:
  - From now until April 2015, you will need to: A. Study architecture programs. B. Complete the required application. B. Complete the rest of the application and submit it to the appropriate authorities. D. Wait for an answer. Select the program you would like to study. E. Sign up!
Part 3
Planning
1. Write down what actions you need to take to achieve each goal. You can do this in any format - handwritten, printed Word document, draw on large sheet, etc. Whatever format you use, write down what actions you will need to take to achieve each of your goals. chronological order. Congratulations - you've just created your life plan.
  - Now is the time to study the details of each step - the name of specific master's programs. Or, if one of your goals is to simply be happy, write down in detail what will make you happiest in this life.
2. Check your life plan. Life changes - and so do we. The goals and priorities we had at 15 will likely be different from the goals we will have at 25 or 45. It is important to periodically review your life plan to check if you are following it in your life, this will allow you to lead a happy life. and a satisfied life.
3. Don't be too hard on yourself if you can't achieve the goal by the date you set - make adjustments to the plan and continue to follow it further.

« The only difference between a plan and a dream is
amount of paper used"
V. Grzegorczyk

The ability to plan one’s actions for the day, month and year ahead is meaningless if a person does not set a serious goal that goes beyond the planned period of activity. Every person must have the skill of long-term vision, which has a serious influence on the planning process. Ideally, it would be good to have long-term vision until the end of a person's life. When talking about a vision for life, it is the end result that is taken into account, not the knowledge of how to achieve that result. Man cannot plan for a period longer than his vision. If you, like the majority, are only able to see what is happening today, then there is no point in mastering the planning process. Think about what your life will be like at the end of the journey. What would you really like to achieve?

If you cannot move beyond the vision of today, then at the end of your life you will probably ask yourself “why did I miss so many chances and achieve almost nothing”?

Your vision must be grand.
By achieving one goal, you will learn to set the next, more serious one. It's better to want more, not less. Once you have formulated your ultimate vision, try to imagine yourself at the dawn of life and ask: “Am I satisfied with the results I achieved”? If you answer yes to this question, it means that you need to continue to follow the chosen path and move on to implementation next stage. If the answer is no, you should try to expand your vision.

To give you an idea of what it means "big vision", let's give an example:

Buy your own island

Become a rare car collector

Buy your own yacht

Buy a sports team

Buy several houses in foreign countries

Achieve great success in business

Bring up the level passive income up to 10 million dollars per year

Dreams that come true are more likely not dreams, but plans

Reading these points, you most likely do not believe in the possibility of their implementation. It `s naturally. You just need to write the title on the piece of paper on which these points will be written: "I have:…" . Put this sheet of paper in a secluded place. Over time, when your goals begin to be realized, you will only be amazed at how easily it happens. If you are now ready to believe that what you have written can be accomplished, that is very good. Re-read your stated goals at least once a day.

If you can't easily articulate a vision for your future, limit yourself to the next ten years.
Be sure to write “I HAVE” or “I HAVE” before listing your goals. Don't try to analyze whether it is feasible or not. Listen to what your soul says. If it says you want to live in a castle by the sea in thirty years, trust me, it's worth writing this down. You can review what you wrote later, but you should not cross out or downplay your goals. The point of this action is for you to clearly made their intentions and desires clear to the universe. Even if all the goals you write are not fully realized, working on them will put you in a much better and more successful position over time. Even if you can only achieve sixty percent of your plans, this will put you in a much better position. better position, regarding the situation you would have found yourself in if you had not set these tasks for yourself.

The dream also needs to be managed, otherwise, like a ship without a rudder, it will drift to God knows where Do you know what is the reason why losers fail?
The fact is that such people obviously doubt the possibility of achieving their goals, and therefore simply do not formulate them. They predict in advance that if they fail to achieve their goal, they will not be able to maintain the level own self-esteem on the right level. However, in reality, the opposite happens: self-esteem decreases when a person does not set goals for himself.

So, having completed the first stage of planning, when you have formulated a vision of your future for the coming decade, you should move on to the second stage. This step is to be able to divide the goals into so-called intermediate ones. So, you have to divide a period of ten years into several intervals: five years, three years, one year and six months.

Using your ten-year goals as a basis, you need to formulate goals that you should achieve in five years. When formulating these goals, you should not think that in reality this is completely impossible; you form these goals based only on whether achieving them will bring you satisfaction.

Using five-year goals as a basis, you formulate goals for the next three years. Exactly the same as in previous paragraph, you need to think about what you would like your life to look like in three years.

Based on the goals that you must achieve in three years, formulate goals for the year ahead.

And finally, based on the goals set for the year ahead, you formulate goals for the next six months.

Of course, you should not assume that after you have written your goals on a piece of paper, all your subsequent activities will be reduced to just waiting for the result. The Universe will be able to realize the goals you set only if your intention to achieve these goals is truly serious. The ability to realize your goals directly depends on your willingness to act and on how well your thinking matches the tasks. If you do nothing, you will not get results. True desire reaching your goal will force you to work in the right direction. Only after you are ready to constantly take actions aimed at achieving the task at hand can you feel ready to get what you want.

When you say that you are ready to get what you have in mind, you are lying. Answer your question honestly: could you today competently manage a monthly amount of ten thousand dollars in such a way that it generates income? What do you say if your monthly income will increase to a million? Can you do it without necessary knowledge and opportunities to dispose of it so that it can bring you ten times a large amount? If your mindset was ready to handle such monetary assets, you would already have these amounts at your disposal. According to statistics, a person who wins a million or another large sum of money spends it within a month to a year, without being able to increase it. Although, having certain knowledge about how to manage money, a person who has received a million can increase it and improve his standard of living tenfold.

It is for this reason that you first need to learn to think like a successful person.
Only then does one become ready to receive what one has successful personality. Setting realistic goals that you are confident of achieving is unlikely to lead you to results. Not having big goal, you will not strive to take serious actions to achieve it.

Articulate your big vision now.
Write down your goals.
Don't be afraid to make a mistake.
The biggest mistake you will make is letting your own life take its course, trusting it to chance.