I hear ya there. I think as you progress you will certainly find the appropriate goals and will know what to work on. You are way ahead of the game as far as most golfers go by just thinking about a plan to improve. Most golfers' idea of practice is to just hit a bucket of balls with the driver.

A little info on how my game has been progressing:

Played Monday, scored 108 ... 57/51 on a course that IIRC is about a 69/120 rating and slope from the whites. Last fall, I was consistently hitting mid 90s, but have struggled to break 100 consistently this year. Before monday, I knew that was mostly from being rusty with the short game , but this time out, my short game was pretty strong, at least as strong as my typical days last fall, but my ball striking was as bad as it's been in a year (took up golf about 1 1/2 years ago).

I know exactly what I have to work on more than anything else to see big improvement on the course. Relaxing and using the good swing I have in practice. In practice, I make solid, consistent contact at least 90% of the time on my shots. I have a sound swing mechanically with good balance and follow through. When I get to the course, I am lucky to make that nice swing 20% of the time. My challenge is to somehow find a way to bring the swing I have in practice to the course. If I could do so, my handicap would be mid teens instead of high 20s.

But there were a lot of positives from my round Monday. The short game feel is starting to come back after a harsh winter that didn't allow me to practice much. I holed out a very difficult chip, nearly holed out 3 others, and also holed out a putt from 15 ft from off the green. I made 5 putts from 12-20 ft, which is very very good for me, and also had 3 or 4 very nice pitches from within 50 yds. Basically, almost every shot I managed to relax and not worry about turned out very well. But for some reason, I was feeling more stressed than usual about most of the shots, and hit a lot of bad ones. I carded 6 penalty strokes on the round.