How to Figure Out Your Long-Term Goals (How to Figure Out What You Want)

Most people never slow down long enough to actually decide what they want. They know they’re unhappy “here,” but they’ve never defined “there.”

If you’ve ever thought, “I don’t even know what I want in life,” this is a simple process to find your long-term goals without turning it into a 3-day spiritual retreat. (Which frankly sounds kinda.. fun.. anyways.)

1. Start with what you’re already good at

Look at your strengths first: what you’re naturally good at, what comes easy to you compared to other personality types. (Bear with us, we're getting to other goal types, but this is a good place to start to get the perspective right.)

Ask yourself:

• What do I value most in life? What do I value most from what I have already? This can be an ability, or something outside yourself.

• If I value this highly, knowing that among 8-9 billion humans there are millions very similar to me, there must be other people who value it too.

• Inside that area, is there a real problem I could solve that would be highly valuable to someone else or to society—maybe a problem I already solved for myself?

Now think about how you could package that value for the world:

• A job.

• A service.

• A product.

• A piece of software.

That’s the seed of a career or business long-term goal. The reason the seed sprouts is because you start with value and a problem, not just an interest of yours.

If your goals are more financial than entrepreneurial, you can aim for high-value jobs instead of building a business. Ask a large language model (like ChatGPT or Grok) something like:

“Find me the top 10 vastly undersupplied job types in industries with high profit margins and excess capital. Filter them to jobs likely still in high demand in 5+ years as AI changes the job market.”

Then decide which path actually fits you.

2. Define a few key non-career long-term goal categories

You don’t need goals in every category of life. But these prompts will help you sketch out your long-term goals:

• Material / reward goal

  • If you provide serious value to the world for 10+ years, what’s one thing you’d love to buy as a reward?

  • House? Land? A certain car? Travel pattern? That’s your material long-term goal.

• Fitness / health goal

  • In 10 years, what kind of body and health do you want?

  • Strong? Lean? Mobile? Healthy bloodwork? That’s your fitness long-term goal.

• Relationships goal

  • What do you want your family, friends, and romantic relationships to look like in 10 years?

  • Who do you want around you? How often do you actually see them?

• Lifestyle goal

  • When you’re not working, how do you want to spend your time?

  • What do you never want to spend your time on again?

You can absolutely skip categories you don’t care to direct. Maybe you’re okay with relationships evolving more organically, or you don’t care much about material stuff. That’s fine.

One exception: having no income/financial goal at all is risky. The uncomfortable truth is that inflation erodes buying power when you're not intentional about income growth. Without stable resources, most of your other goals become harder or impossible.

3. Zoom out: if anything were possible, what would you actually do?

Now take a step way back.

If you could do anything a human can do in this world—no fake limits, no “people like me can’t…” stories—what would you want your life to look like?

• Does that answer change the goals you just wrote down?

• Are you secretly aiming smaller than you actually want, just so it feels “normal”? Or because a partner, friend, or parent has other plans?

Be honest with yourself here.

The odd thing about having real, big long-term goals is that it may require you to live differently than almost everyone around you. Roughly 83% of people have no concrete goals at all. Without a direction, any choice is both “right” and “wrong”. Nothing conflicts with their goals... because there are no goals. They won't understand until they get to your zoomed-out perspective, (we'll call it clarity), and that's ok.

When you do have clear long-term goals and you break them into smaller steps, your life will look different:

• You’ll say no to things other people say yes to.

• You’ll build things other people only talk about.

• You’ll track progress while they track celebrities.

People might make you feel weird for not doing what “most people” do. But most people don’t get what they want out of life. So which behavior is actually strange?

Write your long-term goals down. Then break them into 10-year, 5-year, 1-year, quarter, and month goals. Then track them until they’re real. That’s exactly what ClarityGoals is built to help you do.