In the process right now and started off kind of overwhelmed on how to plan. What we did: picked a cheap place to land. Scoured for tickets for weeks (maybe months?) until we found the all time cheapest. It happened to be Ireland. Boom, first place picked to travel. Obviously there's a lot to see so just hopping around the island easily would have taken
me two weeks (I love the coast!!).
So, from there... make a list of places you'd like to go and events you'd like to attend. Look at whats closest to what (say you want to see spain, portugal and norway. It would make sense to hang out around portugal/spain for a while before heading up north). This will save on transportation costs and lost days traveling.
Just start small. Look around at events happening and see if anything piques your interest. If so, plan for it, and work out visiting other places around that.
One piece of advice - do NOT plan out EVERYTHING! Leave room to just be on the go and for flexibility. We are planning on staying in Europe (with the possibility of SE Asia) for as long as possible. We have the first two months pretty well planned. After that, we're just gonna go. Hop on the train and hop off somewhere interesting. We're bringing a travel tent w/lightweight sleeping bags, along with the courage to knock on peoples doors to ask to pitch the tent in their yard/pay for a room in their house/sleep in an airport if all else fails.
It just seems to be a natural occurance that once you start to plan, things fall into place rather quickly/easily.
Also, welcome to the boards!
What do you have planned so far?
edited to add: haven't executed it yet but we leave in less than 3 weeks and everythings working so far.