In thinking about my next role, I find it helpful to reconnect with friends and ex-colleagues to hear what they've been working on, as well as to catch up on life more broadly. When I reach out and I don't hear back, it's often helpful to try again. The time of the retry might be a better time.
There are those with more definite long term goals, which they use to work backwards from. This is from Sam Altman's post.
Have clear goals for yourself every day, every year, and every decade.
If you operate differently, that's OK. Another model is Naval Ravikant, whose advice focuses on improving the leverage you have with your time. The clip is from Samantha Ryan's podcast.
It's very important to be honest with yourself so you can actually succeed without hurting yourself, without being in self conflict all the time and without being ineffective. Because if you're effective and you just get what you want, you can trade it for other things.
A recent gem I found, credits to Steven Zhang, is a clip of Bryan Cranston telling us to focus on the process, not the outcome.