How many ideas for the future do you have?

Most people don't think about this question when it comes to their future. They just do what they have to do right now, and they leave everything else for the future. They have aspirations and goals, but not well formed ideas that could offer them some sense of "security" when it comes to future projects they may need to work on in order to make progress.

For example, let's say that right now you're working on Steemit and you're doing well. You have a decent number of followers and you're making a decent amount of money every single month. You're happy and you're complacent with the way life turned out to be until this moment.

However, what if Steemit will fail in the future? What if this website loses its users and you won't be able to make any kind of income with your articles any more? What will you do then?

Well, most people just leave that for when (or if) will happen. I'm not saying there aren't people who don't think their current job may end. I'm just saying that not a lot of them have a plan for when that happens. They just focus on the present and ignore most things that can go wrong in the future.

I'm all about focusing on the present, but I also believe we should care about what's gonna happen next. You don't need to spend hours and months thinking about a complete plan that you may apply once everything goes wrong. That may be a little too much. However, having a few ideas that may help you figure out what you need to do next may be exactly what you need.

For example, a while ago I had a personal blog where I was posting articles approaching all kind of subjects. I was pretty sure I'll be famous within months and I'll make thousands of dollars without a lot of work. I was wrong. In just a year I had to give up and focus on something else, because I wasn't making anything with my blog.

Before that happen I thought that because I enjoy writing I may do it again in the future. I thought: "maybe I'll have another blog when I'll be more experienced or maybe I'll start publishing on other websites that will pay me for my articles" So what I did was writing down 5 ideas every single day, for around a month, on a Word document on my computer, with what kind of articles I should write in case I'll ever do it again.

I got around 130 ideas and then I completely forgot about the Word document. I started working as a graphic designer for Graphic River & Creative Market and didn't think about writing any more. A few months ago I decided I wanted to write once again, and I started with Medium.

I published there for around a month and then I discovered Steemit. I do my best to post at least twice a day and to provide as much content as possible. The downside of this is that sometimes I just run out of ideas. I can't think of another article to write and I get stuck.

Here's where that old Word file comes in handy - whenever I feel like I don't know what to write I open that file and I go through the ideas I had a few years ago. I don't always use them, but reading what kind of topics I was interested in back then always helps me think of something I can include in an article, and this way I always have ideas I could use.

Years ago I thought about this moment and I prepared by writing down ideas on a file, and now I use them to write articles for Steemit. One small effort in the past made my work easier in the present.

Because of that I decided I should do it again, and a few months ago, when I started writing, I also started thinking about future projects I may want to work on and ideas that may help me create content and work on all kind of things in case writing fails or in case I want to do something different a few months or years from now.

I got almost 2000 ideas in a few months, enough to last me for entire years. I have ideas for future design projects I want to work on, programming projects, video games, books, animations and much more.

A few months thinking about the future helped me come up with ideas that I can work on for the next 10 years. That will help me always have something to work on and get me all the rewards I'll ever need to live the life I want.

I'm not saying you should spend 90% of your time thinking about the future or that you should do what I did and write down 20 ideas every single day about things you want to work on. What I'm saying is that spending 5 to 10 minutes every single day thinking about that and writing down a few things that you may work on in the future may provide you with enough ideas to work for a long time.

The future will come, no matter how far away it seems. It's always better to be prepared for it and to have a plan B, than to think you'll find a way to solve your problems when they'll come and find yourself in situations where you'll have to suffer, not knowing what to do next. Ten minutes a day thinking about that will help you avoid most unforeseen events and offer you a sense of security when it comes to your future.