How can you plan life if you don't know what to do ?

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I'm feeling as though at 18, I should have sat down and written a long-term plan of things I wanted to achieve in life even though at the time, I had no idea what exactly I wanted to achieve. I didn't sit and write down I want to drive my own car and I seem to think other people around me at the time were already learning to drive a car and knew what career they wanted. I didn't seem to bother at the time to ask my parents for driving lessons and only did them mainly because I allowed my dad to persuade me to do it even though at the time I had little interest in it. I seem to feel quite bad that I wasn't one of those kids who WANTED to drive and was eager to learn, pass and get on the road. I didn't pass and get on the road in my own car until I was 28.

I still didn't have a clear idea of what to do after sixth form, but was suggested to do an art and design course probably based on the fact that I got a high grade in that from my exams, I went and did for two years but then I gradually lost interest in it and I then for some reason became interest in other fields like history (which I wasn't much interested in at school) and wanting to write my own book. I didn't even decide to myself I'll go and apply for a history course or something at uni.

I sometimes think would I have achieved things by planning for them even though there is little guarantee that you will get those achievements ? Unlike that guy who wrote the book ''Happy Sexy Millionaire'', I didn't tell myself that I wanted to become a multi-millionaire by the age of 25 and have a girlfriend and a flashy, fast car and didn't really achieve things he had. I did however meet someone I liked but at the time I didn't feel like I wanted a long-term relationship with her so we stayed friends and also at the time I didn't have a job and earning lots of money or drive my own car which was fast and flashy. The car I have now is fairly old and isn't flashy.

I’m 36 and I still don’t really know what I want to do in life but recently I decided to focus on having a generally positive mindset and be able to take care of myself financially. My plan right now is to learn to feel content with where I am while putting in effort to learn more about my job so I can get better skills and hopefully get paid more someday.

I fail a lot but it’s working slowly.

I think starting with a small plan helps then build more or bigger plans as you move forward. It’s hard because we’re all in different places but this is what I do and I’ve also felt I’m lagging behind people my age in certain areas of life.

You don't.

Not sure such a thing as Mentors exist Anymore .? Seems like your suppose to magically know this stuff....
But I think your parents and maybe grades in school were suppose to point you in a direction.?
But thats how i got as far as having and owning a car when was but a wee little ? okay Young Adult jakki .
When parents underestimate a childs potential, sometimes it seems they do not invest in them.?
Then they have to figure it out , if they are dealing with several kiddies.

Just might be thankful you did not go in some bad direction in life and end up in prison or running from the law.?
Ended up keeping a sharp eye out for possible good opportunities and stuck with what seemed best options for me.
And re-evaluate your own friendships periodically if you have them , Cause they might very well be the thing holding you back once you find your own sense of direction.In Life . And do not be hesitant to have to go it alone .. but , these are just my ideas, / experience .

i still don't know what i wanna do when i grow up. but seriously, [this is based on hard-learnt personal experience] i wish i could go back in time to meet my 20-something self and impress upon him the following bits of wisdom-

*above all, buy low and sell high
*invest early and often
*buy quality the first time even if you have to sell your soul - if you keep buying cheap junk you will have 1]cheated yourself out of what you really wanted, time waste that you'll never get back, and 2]you will have ended up spending way more money replacing the cheap unreliable junk rather than just buying one good quality item that will outlast all that junk
*pay way more attention to your appearance and presentation even if it means you have to crib off of celebs you see on tv
*pay early attention to good health practices/diet, take your diet seriously because your body will have to carry you when you are old, and a healthy body is way better at this task than the decrepit body which results from not paying proper attention to these details. you can't go to the body store for replacement parts if they break down sooner than expected.

I've never planned my life. I've had things I wanted to work towards, sure, but there was never a multiple-decade "final goal". Things change too much for that.

Personally, the most I'd do is check in every five years or so with the list of things I wanted to get around to doing, go through them, and see if any of them needed deleting, editing, or priority-shuffling.

I got diagnosed about a decade ago when I scored 6 free psychology sessions (Government program) to explore why I had such large time gaps between jobs. Psychologists can't usually formally diagnose in Australia, but they can apparently collaborate with my doctor who can diagnose. So here I am, an Aspie.
Once that was accomplished, my Psychologist applied for an extension of sessions, and we got 6 more. Keep in mind, this was all employment related. Short story long, at the end of it, he left me with a diagnosis and one piece of advice that I've never forgotten.
He basically said that the biggest problem for autistics doing survival jobs (whatever job you can get to pay the bills and buy groceries), is that we have little control over what we get. Maybe it's a good job. But often it's totally unsuitable job that we only last days or weeks in.
He advised to take time to study our aptitudes, and with that insight, work out what field we'd like to focus on. From there, we can try and keep our jobs within these boundaries. It's basically a career outlook. The advantages of this include limiting unsuitable jobs, increasing specific skill sets which in turn increases our employment value, increases our familiarity with job expectations which decreases our discomfort, and helps with networking which can help get past the interview phase.
Even if you're not able to plan or micro-manage a career, you may be able to look back at past survival jobs, work out which ones fit better than others, and decide to limit your search to those kinds of jobs.

Make a decision and then get to work doing until you achieve your desired result.

Or make several threads on WP all about a lack of life direction, and then keep making more, and then eventually that Becomes the thing that you do with your time & energy. If that's the life for you, do it to your heart's content. If you want to do something different, then do that thing - but doing something different starts with deciding to.

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No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.

Reminds me of the chorus of this old song from a local band:
(link starts at 1:02 for specific lyrics)



So there ya go.. people do jack s**t when they don't make a decision and take action to do a thing. If you don't wanna just float through life doing squat all, decide on something you want to do and then do it.

_________________
No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.

Chris. Probably a lot of my life I have drifted through... Sometimes we do that until one day we find vision. Is like a ship where they can't see the stars to sail by, and then one day the clouds clear and they have reference points for direction!

Good advice in here for sure.

I'd add that if the big picture life plan is not clear, it helps to break it down into sub-plans or sub-goals or whatever in some of which the objective might be more clear, and then pursue those as pieces of the overall puzzle.

For example, what are your goals in terms of:

Work
Social connections
Family
Location
Hobbies/interests
etc etc etc

You may not have answers for all of them, but if you do for any of them, those planned for and worked on in themselves probably brings you closer to whatever the end goal is, even if that end goal isn't clear.