The important milestones in a person’s life do not usually happen quickly, and therefore we believe that there are, in fact, no shortcuts.

    • Patience & long term vision: Thinking in the long term, will lead learners to make better decisions by boosting self-control and avoiding shortcuts that usually lead only to immediate satisfaction and consequent disappointment.
    • Giving up an immediate reward, to the possible benefit of a better one in the future, does not require additional willpower but, on the contrary, a proper formulation of the options available.
    • A hasty choice of a university or training option can be a life-limiting decision, a hasty or urgent decision, or a strategy where the short term prevails over the long term can be a gamble that has very important collateral effects.
    • Time perspective, i.e. a person’s ability to think ahead when making decisions in the present, is crucial.
    • Not losing focus on the actions aimed at the main goal. Knowing why we do something, is essential. Knowing that there are short-term actions that help to achieve long-term ones. Knowing how to find the balance between small milestones and big achievements is fundamental to move from isolated actions to “insight” and make an impact on our personal life and on society.
  • It is not a matter of not living through the process, on the contrary, we have to take every step and do so in accordance with our convictions. But we have to be able to control emotions, as they can easily destroy even the most steadfast intention. We have to accept every failure as a basis for improvement. When you know how to be positive and add experiences and knowledge the effect is simply compensatory. It is better to do little by little in the short term to have a much more ambitious result in the long term.
  • That is why it is important to know how to define our goals at each stage, to have our personal map so that we do not lose our bearings. As Peter Druker says, long-term planning is not thinking about future decisions, but about the future of present decisions”.
  • Clarify the itineraries. Once we know what we want to achieve at each stage, we need to develop specific strategies. We must have our own self-awareness of who we are and what we want to do. And that is why we have to establish priorities. We cannot address secondary needs and overlook the main one.
  • We need to be able to imagine different scenarios, and also to foresee worst-case scenarios. In any long-term plan there will be setbacks that can slow us down, unless we have foreseen them and are prepared to deal with them.
  • The point of balance between short, medium and long term milestones can only be consolidated with persistent work, discipline and method that will help us to continue with our vision, or with our mission, or with our vocation, controlling the search for useless shortcuts, excessive distractions, or fruitless hopes such as luck. Thomas Jefferson famously said: “I am a great believer in luck. And I have found that the harder I work, the luckier I am”.