Last night, I met a delightful individual, Tracy Slotin, who works on the road delivering seminars for financial types (How to be a great controller, etc). I was going over my own business plan, and she suggested a different type of planning.
Where do you want your business to be in a 100 years? Write it down. Where do you want it to be in 50 years? Write it down. In 25? 10? 5? 2? next year? in 6 months? 3 months? 1 month, etc. Then next to the result, briefly write one or two things that you must do to achieve that result. If you follow this religiously, you will know exactly what needs to happen this week and next. The beauty of this system is that when you hit each of these milestones, you'll be able to compare the actual with the plan, and assess your progress against a specific milestone.
We can use this same approach when it comes to our career. I am pretty sure where my career will be 100 years from now: 6 feet under. It will work if you start with a number closer to 30 or 40.