If you now have a reasonably clear picture of your goal, and why you want to achieve it, set some major objectives. In my view, objectives are stepping stones along the way to your goal.
Usually you can take some of the reasons you explored above and turn them into specific objectives. Also, don’t be afraid to set some objectives that you still have to understand further. This understanding comes during the research work below.
I strongly recommend you write down your goal, reasons and objectives. This act alone significantly improves your chances of success. Writing these down before starting your investigation helps keep you motivated. You may need this when you start to understand what work you need to do. Often you find you have underestimated the effort needed to achieve your objectives.
The brain has an interesting ability to subtlety change your thinking once it realizes it might have more work than it realized. By writing down your objectives, you can later check back to what you were originally thinking. You can also check what has changed. If you are now feeling less excited about your goal, why is that? Is it simply because it’s more effort than you thought? If so, is that a reason to change your goal?
Keep your objectives close by while you progress towards your goal, and review them regularly. Update them if you feel they don’t match your current direction. Review them if you find you are regularly lacking in motivation. Check whether your objectives are clear enough or whether the goal is compelling enough?
Also feel free to update and change your goals. Be wary though of reducing your vision of what you want to achieve. Peter Senge in “The Fifth Discipline” talks about a “creative tension” that comes from setting a vision that stretches us to achieve it. There are two ways for you to release that tension. You can work to move yourself closer to your vision, or you can lower your vision. The more you reduce your vision, the less you move away from your current reality. Change your vision and objectives due to purpose, and not just an unwillingness or laziness to move from your present circumstances.