This Is What My 5 Year Plan To Manifest An Amazing Life By 40 Looks Like

I know myself well enough to know I’m not gonna stick to this five-year plan, but sometimes having one anyway just makes me feel good about myself. It makes me feel like my dreams are achievable. It makes me feel like I can work towards my goals. It gives me that bit of clarity I need to start taking action that day.

That’s the thing about five-year plans: they’re not set in stone. They’re not meant to be this rigid, suffocating strategy that you follow no matter what. For me (and probably for you too if you’re a 30-something trying to figure it all out) they’re about vision. They’re about direction. They’re about knowing where you’re heading, even if you’re not exactly sure of the road you’ll take to get there.

So, in this blog post, I’m sharing how I’ve used my five-year vision to map out an actionable plan that feels exciting, doable, and not overwhelming (even with ADHD). I’ll show you how I broke my vision down into five years, three years, one year, and six months, and how I turned it into clear, simple steps for business, finances, relationships, and health.

If you’re in your 30s and feeling “behind,” this will help you create your own version of a plan that keeps you moving forward, without the pressure of perfection.

Why a Five-Year Plan in Your 30s Matters

I recently had a moment where I realised in five years, I’ll be turning 40. And if my life looks exactly as it does now, I’ll be really disappointed in myself. Don’t get me wrong, I love my life right now. But I also know I want more.

That’s the beauty of being in your 30s. You’ve already lived enough to know what you don’t want, and you’re starting to picture what you do want. But if you don’t write that vision down, if you don’t map out a direction, it’s really easy to just keep drifting along.

Creating a five-year plan isn’t about control, it’s about clarity. And for me, clarity leads to confidence.

Step 1: Start With Your Vision

If you haven’t already, go back and read part two of this series, because that’s where I built my five-year vision.

I wrote out everything I wanted to achieve, including the so-called “delusional goals”, the ones that feel a bit too big, a bit too far away, but also really exciting. I even got ChatGPT to help me write a future story of my life at 40, and honestly? It made me emotional thinking about where my life could be.

Once I had that, I was ready for the next step: turning the vision into an actual plan.

Step 2: Turn Your Vision Into an Actionable Plan

Here’s the thing: I know myself. I have ADHD, and if a plan feels overwhelming or too rigid, I’ll never stick to it. So I told ChatGPT:

“Please help me turn this vision into an actionable plan. I want to know what I need to be doing every day, week, and month to transform this vision into my reality. Please make it easy to implement, exciting, and not overwhelming. Break it down into five years, three years, one year, and six months. Cover business, finances, relationships, and health.”

And that’s exactly what I got back.

At first, it gave me more of a big-picture breakdown, which was helpful. But then I asked for something even more specific:

“Can you break this down into a checklist of actions for the next five months so I know what to do each day, week, and month?”

That’s when things got really useful.

Step 3: Break It Down by Months, Weeks, and Days

To give you an idea of what the broken down plan looks like, here’s a snapshot at July. It gave me what I call a “foundation month”, a time to build momentum and make the vision real. Here’s what that looked like:

Monthly Focus for July:

• Finish Product Film School lessons

• Create one mini commercial project

• Relaunch dating app profile with confident prompts

• Write out dream relationship and business vision (and read it daily)

• Book a free braces consultation (note: I decided to push this back to my 2–3 year plan, but it’s still good to have on the radar)

Weekly Actions for July:

• Start filming a mini ad project

• Set up a content planner

• Record and upload one podcast episode

• Reach out to a friend for a catch-up coffee

Daily Habits for July:

• Drink 2L of water

• Capture one behind-the-scenes content idea

• Say one money, health, or self-love affirmation out loud

• Move my body for 10+ minutes (walk, stretch, dance, whatever feels good)

That, for me, is a game-changer. It’s simple, doable, and doesn’t rely on me making endless decisions.

Why This Works So Well with ADHD

One of the hardest things about ADHD is decision-making. My brain gets caught up in:

• “This step needs to happen before that step…”

• “But if I do this, then I can’t do that yet…”

• “Wait, maybe I should start over here instead?”

It becomes a spiral, and then nothing gets done.

But when I have a clear, broken-down plan in front of me - weekly and daily checklists - I don’t have to overthink it. I can just tick off the boxes. And that works with how my brain likes structure without pressure.

I’ve done this before with cleaning. I hate cleaning, but when I gave myself tiny daily tasks and wrote them down on a little Amazon notepad, suddenly it became manageable. Same principle here: small, clear, daily steps that build into something bigger.

Step 4: Keep Your Plan Flexible

Here’s the truth: I’m not going to stick to this five-year plan exactly as it is. And that’s fine. The point isn’t perfection, it’s direction.

Plans are there to guide you, not cage you. If something doesn’t fit right now (like braces for me), you can push it back. If you discover something new you want, you can add it in. The key is to keep your plan flexible enough to grow with you.

Step 5: Hold Yourself Accountable

Now that I’ve got the plan, I need to actually hold myself accountable. Here’s how I’m doing that:

• Weekly Meetings With Myself: Every Sunday (or Monday), I’m blocking out time in my calendar to sit down, look at my goals, and check in with my progress.

• Celebrate the Wins: We spend so much time celebrating other people and so little time celebrating ourselves. That needs to change. Every week, I’m making sure I actually acknowledge what I’ve done, not just what’s left.

• Adjust for My Cycle: This is a big one for me. I know that the week before my period, I have no energy. That is not the week for me to batch-create videos. But the week after my period? I can smash out more work than I do the rest of the month. Knowing this helps me plan with more compassion and flexibility.

Step 6: Start Living Your Vision Now

Here’s the final (and maybe most important) part: you don’t have to wait five years to start living your dream life. You don’t need to wait until you’ve ticked every box on the plan. You don’t need to wait until you hit 40. You can start living parts of that vision today.

For me, that means:

• Taking action on the small daily steps (like writing this blog post) without stressing about the bigger goals (like buying a house).

• Infusing my current life with pieces of the future life I want, so I’m already living it while I’m building it

How to Create Your Own Five-Year Plan

If you’re in your 30s and feeling a bit lost, I cannot recommend this enough: take some time to write your five-year vision, then break it down into manageable, exciting, flexible steps.

Remember:

• Start with the vision: What do you want your life to look like at 40?

• Break it down: Five years, three years, one year, six months

• Keep it simple: Daily and weekly checklists

• Stay flexible: Plans are meant to evolve with you

• Hold yourself accountable: Weekly meetings, cycle tracking, celebrating wins

• Live it now: Don’t wait for the “end result” to start embodying your dream life
  

Having a five-year plan doesn’t mean you’ll follow it perfectly. It means you’ve got clarity, direction, and motivation to keep moving forward, and that’s what creates confidence in your 30s.

So, write your vision. Create your plan. And become the person who gets what they want in their 30s.

---

Hi, I’m Becka, a single 34 year old who doesn’t have kids and lives at home with her mum, and despite society’s desperate attempts, I don’t feel behind. I’m figuring out my 30s without believing I need to “get my shit together” in order to be successful or seen as valuable.

If you’re done feeling behind or like you’re “not enough,” this is your reminder you’re exactly where you need to be, and we’re in it together. Get a front row seat to how I’m building a confident life in my 30s (and how you can too) here.

---

---

Share on Pinterest

---