Set and track career goals.
Career goals fail on arithmetic more often than on motivation. Multiplying the number of goals by the effort each requires gives a total that can be compared against the hours actually available in the horizon. When the required weekly commitment exceeds what you have, the plan is not ambitious — it is arithmetically impossible, and the fix is to cut goals rather than to try harder.
Goal load against available time
Total hours = goals x hours per goal; weeks available = months x 4.345; required weekly hours = total hours / weeks available
Two or three. Beyond that, context switching costs mount and no single goal accumulates enough continuous effort to reach a visible milestone, which is where motivation comes from.
Break it into deliverables and estimate those. A professional certification is typically 80-150 hours, a portfolio project 40-80, and building a genuine professional network in a new field several hundred spread over a year.
Extend the horizon rather than compressing the work. Goals that require sustained learning respond badly to compression, and a 15-month plan that completes beats a 12-month plan that stalls in month four.