Contrary to the common school of thought I believe you should define your goals based on what immediate actions you can take. For your research goal, I would begin thinking about - what kind of research can you start tomorrow that points in novel directions? The answer is vastly different depending on if today you are a mycelium hobbyist to a python programmer who has a GPU powerful enough to run local LLM models or have a Zoom Recorder and a personal relationship with the last known speaker of a dying language. For the drawing one I'm really confused - do you want to paint onto canvas or draw (onto paper, or into a digital tablet)? Do you want to achieve photorealism or, for example, are you more interested in gestural accuracy? In either case the immediate action is probably, research which fine art books are well regarded and loaded with exercises, buy it, once its in your hands - one by one work through all the exercises. The prevailing wisdom is that this kind of goal-setting is restrictive because, simply put, you don't know what affordances or opportunities are available to you until you set out to accomplish a goal. However, in my personal experience, there are no opportunities or affordances that emerge... or if there are, they only exist in proximity to very clear plans and sequences of actions to accomplish the goal based on concrete assumptions. Therefore I advise- find the most immediate action you can take, with your current resources, knowledge, and even social networks that appears to align with the goal. One way to do that is to work backwards by defining what conditions would narrowly define success for the goal.