{"id":943,"date":"2016-09-27T17:11:44","date_gmt":"2016-09-27T09:11:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roblilwall.com\/en-ae\/?p=943"},"modified":"2025-04-29T15:27:43","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T07:27:43","slug":"five-ways-goals-can-help-expedition-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roblilwall.com\/en-ae\/blog\/2016\/09\/27\/five-ways-goals-can-help-expedition-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Five ways goals can help in the expedition of life"},"content":{"rendered":"

We were in the middle of the emptiness of Siberia, in winter, on our bicycles. The icy road under our wheels was actually known as \u201cthe road of bones\u201d because so many of Stalin\u2019s prisoners had died building it back in the 1930s. It was only the second month of a 37-month expedition, and I was feeling run down, out of my depth, frightened, cold. I was trying to cycle home from Siberia to England. I could picture my home in my mind \u2013 my family, the dining table. In my imagination it was nighttime, but the lights were all on. But it was so very far away – over 50,000 km and over three years of riding, to be precise.\u00a0Quite a depressing thought given how cold and exhausted we felt.<\/p>\n

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A more immediate place I wanted to get to was the Russian coastline – from where we could catch a ferry to Japan – a land I had never been, but which seemed to me, especially compared to Siberia, a place of great safety and comfort – hot springs, shopping malls and overly-polite people bowing at each other. Japan was about 2,000km and a month of riding away, so a lot nearer than home, and a lot easier to focus on reaching.<\/p>\n

But we were behind schedule and even a month of riding seemed pretty tough. And on top of that, we realised that at our current rate, we would not make it before our visas ran out. So we worked out a daily goal – of the distance we would have to cover every day if we were going to make it on time. It was 106km a day – which on these icy roads was quite a long way. This meant long hours of riding, much of it in darkness. We would rise at 5am, pack away our tents, then ride through the dawn, through the day, and then into the night, refusing to stop until we hit our daily goal, whereupon we could throw up our tents and camp again. (If you\u2019d like to read more on my trip, check out my book Cycling Home From Siberia<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>available on my website)<\/p>\n

3 Types of Goals<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think I would have analysed it in quite such terms at the time, but something I have seen now in hindsight, is that I was clear about three kinds of goals in my mind:<\/p>\n

I had a long-term <\/em>goal (for the next three years),<\/p>\n

A medium-term<\/em> goal (for the next month), and<\/p>\n

A short-term<\/em> goal (for today).<\/p>\n

And the first two, at least, I had visualised. And they were very appealing. They were something I was wanting to move towards. The short-term goal, was something we could aim at daily. It was tough, but controllable.<\/p>\n

And as we stuck to our daily goal, gradually our medium-term goal became closer, until we had gained sufficient morale and momentum from sticking to our short-term goal that we knew we would make it. When we did get to northern Japan, I had a new medium-term goal – to get to southern Japan and catch a ferry to South Korea. And so that is what I did, and over the next three years, by gradually moving from goal to goal, from Korea to China to Papua New Guinea to Australia to Singapore to Hanoi to Tibet to Delhi to Kabul to Samarkand to Istanbul to Rome to London\u2026 and so, after three years of sticking to my goals, I eventually made it. Home to London.<\/p>\n

Goals have the power to help us achieve more than we would do otherwise. Visualising gives them more power.\u00a0Breaking them up into long-, medium-, and short-term increases our chance of success.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Top Tips from the Experts<\/strong><\/p>\n