I got so used to living from one fire to the next that a one-year plan felt like a luxury
This was about two years ago, when I was already working for myself.
Some things you can't put off: money, clients, deadlines, health, life admin.
And then there's everything else.
Like figuring out where you actually want to live in three years. What you want to build your income around. What needs to change so you stop feeling like you're constantly playing catch-up.
Back then I kept telling myself I was just busy. Deal with what's on fire now, then sit down and think about the big stuff later.
My business was just getting started. I thought: finally, I'll settle down, run my own projects, set my own pace.
Things didn't calm down. There used to be one big fire called "my job." Now I'd quietly buried myself under a pile of small ones: a report for a client, an invoice to send, an hour-long chat thread, something else breaking. Each thing was small on its own, but together it felt like you couldn't come up for air.
One day I actually tried to sit down and think about the big picture. Coffee, phone on airplane mode, did everything right.
Lasted about five minutes. Remembered I hadn't gotten back to a client about a payment that was stuck. Turned the phone back on "just for a second." And that was it — one thing led to another.
Didn't figure out a thing that day.
The problem was the fire never went out. Or rather, fires, plural — because by then it was never just one.
In January I wrote myself proper goals for the year. Read them back in March — half of it was already irrelevant, life had gone a different way. So I decided: fine, I'll wait until things calm down, then sit down and plan everything properly.
Here's the secret, folks: the fires never stop.
If you're not planning what you'll do once you've put out all the fires, what you're actually doing is waiting for them to stop on their own.
A one-year plan is a must-have, not a luxury.
P.S. If you're trying to break into product or data analytics, I put together a free playbook — From Zero To Offer: the Product Analyst Playbook. Grab it here: ignatenko.gumroad.com/l/wylyes
