I started taking the concept of setting “life goals” seriously in 2011. I was 19, and I had just sort of started to realize I was going to have to figure out what I wanted to do with my life for myself — most of my concepts of what other people wanted for me had started to loosen in my head, and for the first time in my life I felt like I seriously had a chance at having a say in how I spent the majority of my time. The end of college / homework was on the horizon, and I was just starting to imagine what the freedom adult life might provide would allow me to do. I wanted a better view of where my interests would take me.
I set some pretty ambitious yet somehow quite average and boring goals back then. Own a lambo, etc.
One really stood out to me: Make $60k/month. I did that for the first time in 2020. I’ve done it 6-10 months or so since then. I think this year will be the year I unlock that level of personal income every month ongoing. Finally.
Anyway, from setting those goals I noticed a couple things early on. By 2015 I had read enough & listened to enough podcasts and interviews to have picked up on some good habits & techniques for making these goals work even better for me. I’d started analyzing which goals would have the biggest impact on the world with the help of a framework from Peter Diamandis. I had begun to evaluate which goals to do when and started some rudimentary time-boxing with the help of James Clear and his write— ups about Eisenhower Boxes. So that year I wrote my first REALLY truly long term goals, my first 100 year goals, and I thought about publishing them.
I really didn’t have a community back then. I didn’t know anyone who cared about designing their lifestyle, or traveling or making their own living as a business owner. I didn’t know how to find those people. I wanted to change the world and I felt really alone.
In 2015 and 2016 I went to a BUNCH of conferences, I traveled and stayed with as many friends as I could convince to have me all over the country, and made 1000 videos and practiced storytelling. I found my people.
In 2017 I published my 1000 year goals and I got voluntold to run TEDxCOS. That was the year I finally started just being openly myself and the people I wanted around me waltzed into my life.
For several years until the pandemic I got to host some amazing events, work with awesome clients, and now post-pandemic in 2022 I’ve been a part of the same business community in downtown Colorado Springs for an entire decade (since my time-lapse was published and went viral in 2012, which is the first thing most locals remember of my work), and I’ve really felt like I got the life I wanted the last couple years.
I don’t think it’s accidental that these goals helped me get there, and I think it’s been important as well that since 2020 I’ve been turning my 1000-year goals into daily habits in these posts as well.
Last year however I got so caught up in re-writing and perfecting my goals that I didn’t publish them at all!
In 2021 I write mora.co/cassandra about my 1000 year goals, in an attempt to inspire people who were older than I was and felt like making 100 year goals was kind of silly — to inspire them to try anyway, even if the timelines are unrealistic. I ended up just writing a post that was way too long, and so in 2022 I tried to make a much shorter post.
If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now. — Mark Twain
Anyway, this year’s post is going to be whatever length it is when I’m done writing, and I’m going to hit publish. It’s 7pm, Sunday, January 15th. I’m home in Rockrimmon in Colorado Springs, CO. Let’s get into it.
As always, the main events from 1023 for a dose of perspective:
2023 started on a Sunday, which was nice. 1023 started on a Tuesday. The Caliphate of Cordoba disintegrates, the Abbadid Dynasty begins. Nice work Abbad. He would live until 1042, and his caliphate would fall 50 years later. I have never heard of this event in Spain.
In Kyoto, there is a pandemic in April/May that is so swift it leaves dead bodies laying in the streets.
Dom church burns down, gets rebuilt in stone. A note for the people of the far future — if you like it, built it in stone the first time.