A navigation system begins with entering a destination.
It sounds obvious, but
“I want to go somewhere nice”
will not start the directions.
Tokyo Station.
Narita Airport.
A nearby restaurant.
You choose where you want to go.
Only then does a route from your current location to the destination appear.
How many kilometres away it is.
Which roads to take.
Where to turn.
Roughly what time you will arrive.
The moment the destination is set, a single road appears on what had been an empty map.
When you think about it, goals are somewhat similar.
A goal also begins by deciding where you want to go.
I want to become a professional baseball player.
I want to speak Spanish.
I want to open my own shop.
There are many directions you might want to take.
But,
“I want to get better at baseball.”
“I want to get better at Spanish.”
“I want to make something amazing.”
With statements like these, you know the direction, but the destination remains unclear.
In navigation terms, it is something like saying,
“I want to go north.”
You can drive north.
But you do not know how far you must go before you have arrived.
And when the road forks, you cannot decide which way to take.
That is why, when making a goal, it helps to make the destination as clear as possible.
Not,
“Improve my Spanish,”
but,
“Pass the DELE B2.”
The outline of the destination becomes a little clearer.
But who chooses the destination?
There is another obvious thing about a navigation system.
It does not choose the destination.
You do.
It can take you to Tokyo Station.
It can take you to the sea.
It can take you to the airport.
But it does not decide,
“This is where you should go today.”
I think goals are the same.
Where do I want to go?
That is something I have to decide for myself.
Once the destination is set, the road in between appears
Enter a destination, and the navigation system creates a route between it and your current location.
If the destination is far away, many things lie in between.
Join the motorway.
Take an exit.
Turn at an intersection.
Sometimes, stop for a rest along the way.
When driving, you do not stare at the final destination the whole time.
If the system says,
“Turn right in 300 metres,”
you first turn right in 300 metres.
Then it says,
“Continue straight for two kilometres.”
You repeat that process.
Goals work the same way.
For example,
Pass the DELE B2
is the destination you choose.
But you cannot put “pass B2” directly into today's schedule.
Along the way, you set a goal:
Become able to write at B2 level.
For that, you set another goal:
Become able to write the main types of composition.
Then you bring it down further:
Write a composition on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Now,
the distant destination, “Pass the DELE B2,”
is connected to
“Write a composition today.”
Because there is a destination, you can work out what to do along the way.
Numbers may be like an address
When setting goals,
people often say,
“You should include a number.”
Numbers are certainly useful.
Instead of “lose weight,”
“lose five kilograms.”
Instead of “become able to run,”
“run five kilometres in under 30 minutes.”
Instead of “study Spanish,”
“pass the DELE B2.”
They make it easier to know how far you need to go.
In navigation terms, it is like entering a more precise address.
Rather than simply “Tokyo,”
having the street number makes the destination clearer.
But a precise address does not mean that the place is right for you.
“10,000 followers.”
“One million yen in monthly income.”
“A TOEIC score of 900.”
Adding a number makes something look like a goal.
But,
why do you want to go there?
What lies beyond that number?
If you do not know, you have merely entered the destination's address neatly.
Numbers make the destination clearer.
But they do not choose the destination for you.
If you take a wrong turn, recalculate
You take one wrong road while following the navigation system.
“Oh, I missed the turn.”
But the system does not get angry.
It does not say,
“You failed to follow the plan.”
After a moment,
it finds a new route.
If the destination has not changed, you can approach it by another road.
This too resembles a goal.
It is natural for things not to go according to the original plan.
You decided to study every morning, but could not keep it up.
You meant to achieve it this year, but did not make it in time.
You thought one method was best, but tried it and found that it was not.
At times like these, straying from the plan does not itself have to become a failure.
Find another road.
If mornings do not work, try evenings.
If five times a week is too much, try three.
If one method does not suit you, try another.
There is more than one road to a destination.
You can change the destination itself
More than that, I think it is fine to change the destination along the way.
While you are driving,
you may decide, “Actually, let's go to the mountains instead of the sea today.”
Then you can enter a new destination.
A goal is not something that must never change once it has been chosen.
There are things you cannot know until you begin moving.
You try something and find it was different from what you expected.
Something else becomes more interesting.
Something you once wanted no longer matters as much.
Even then,
you do not have to keep heading for the same place solely because
“I chose it once.”
A goal is not there to bind you.
I think it is there to decide the direction in which you move.
If that direction changes, you can change the destination too.
Route to Me does not have a finished map either
In Route to Me, you choose a final goal.
You create goals beneath it.
Then more goals beneath those.
Finally, you connect them to real actions.
But you do not need to decide everything from the beginning.
In fact, I can hardly ever build a perfect goal tree at the start myself.
First, decide on the destination.
Move a little.
Along the way,
if you realize, “I need this before that,”
add it.
If something feels wrong, change it.
Remove goals you no longer need.
Build the road as you move.
What Route to Me contains, then, is not a finished map of your life.
It is the route you see for yourself right now.
It may look a little different tomorrow.
I think that is fine.
Life Is More Complicated Than a Navigation System
Unfortunately, life has nothing like Google Maps.
You cannot enter a destination and be told,
“Continue along this road for 12 years.”
You do not know the shortest route.
There is no estimated arrival time.
No one can even tell you whether the destination itself is right.
So you decide for yourself.
You build the road yourself.
You try moving forward.
If it is wrong, you correct it.
Then you move again.
Making a goal may not be about fixing an absolute route for your future self.
Perhaps it is about the person you are now deciding,
“For now, I will try going this way.”
If the destination changes, set it again.
If you take a wrong road, recalculate.
But you have to decide for yourself where you want to go.
Even a navigation system
cannot decide that much for you.