Yesterday, after my walk, I was cooling down in the park, and saw a bird perched near the top of a tree. I watched him move higher until he was sitting on the highest branch where he sat and actively looked around.

I wondered what he was looking at, or for. His mate? Scouting for predators? Searching for food? Or was he just enjoying the view, naturally climbing higher because his instincts told him that this was the safest place?

From his higher perch, he could survey the land and decide where to go and what to do next. I thought this was an apt paradigm for a human life, that is, the value of periodically stopping and looking at the big picture.

We need to get our nose out of books and away from our devices. We need to hang up our phones. We need some time and some distance from our routines so we can assess where we are and where we want to go.

I do a lot of thinking on my walks. But they aren’t long enough to explore much more than my day or my week–what I’m working on now or what I need to do next.

No time to asses what I’ve done this year, or contemplate what I want to do next year or in the years to come.

Maybe a longer walk would help. Maybe a retreat. Or a few days off at a resort (with room service) where I can think and plan.

I know some folks who take a couple of days off every year to decide on their goals for the coming year. It gives them clarity, they say, and allows them to focus, plan and manage their future.

“The Getting Things Done” methodology talks about the need to look at your life from the 50,000-foot level, and all the way down to the “runway” level where we work and live day-to-day. Other methodologies do something similar, having you first determine your long-term vision and then working backward to map out your yearly and then monthly goals, and finally your daily activities.

However you go about it, it comes down to stepping away from the minutia of daily living, to look at the horizon, asses the threats and the opportunities, and decide where to go next.

Make sure you also have a marketing plan