Since my freshman year in college, I’ve been using more-or-less the same approach to setting goals: I start from 25-year big-picture ones, and then trace backwards from those to 10-year, 5-year, 1-year, 1-quarter, and 1-month goals in turn.  Then, each Friday, I chart out the following week, figuring out what I need to accomplish over the next seven days to stay on track towards the 1-month goals, knowing that in turn keeps me aligned all the way back up.

Through the years since college, I’ve started companies and worked in jobs across three or four different industries, garnered a ton of life experience, and weathered ups and downs of all sorts; that, in turn, has often shifted my shorter-term goals.  But the longer-term ones—the 25-year goals in particular—have stayed remarkably stable.  So much so, in fact, that the last time I really re-thought them from scratch was when I was about 25 years old.

A month back, I turned 39.  In my usual style, I spent a bunch of my birthday thinking about the year behind and the year ahead.  And it suddenly dawned on me that, when my next birthday rolled around, the putative date for those old 25-year goals would then be just 10 years off, becoming my new de facto 10-year goals.  Which meant, in turn, that I needed a new 25-year set.

Starting from 40, those 25-year goals would take me all the way to 65.  And though I suspect I’d likely be one of those guys who never retires, I would hope by then to be at least well on my way towards leaving whatever legacy or positive impact I can on this world.  So, I’ve been spending a little bit of each day thinking through exactly what I hope that legacy or impact might be, what goals I’d like to set that make me push and stretch for the 25 years that (hopefully) lie ahead.  Much like the effective corporate BHAGs – big, hairy, audacious goals – described in the classic study Good to Great, I’ve been looking for goals that both excite me and slightly scare me.  And I have some, by now, just starting to take shape.

Still, I’m giving myself all the way until the end of this birthday year before I call them final.  If I’m hoping this set holds equally steady for the next 25 years, that probably requires at least a full year’s consideration up front.