Get real! and follow your dreams
I see a lot of motivational posts telling you that You have to follow your dreams to feel any purpose in life. These posts are often filled with claims of perfect happiness, infinite sunshine and unicorns farting rainbows on your face… It all seems legit, I really like the idea of realising all my dreams and hey, graphs don’t lie!
I also see plenty of posts urging people to Get real, you suck, stick to your boring job these posts point out that you’re not a unique snowflake and you’re not going to be the next Branson, Jobs, Gates or any other great name. But hey, a job’s good right, you can pay your bills and stuff and of course, graphs don’t lie! Right?
There seems to be an extremist dichotomy for most things around today; eat sugar not fat, eat fat not sugar, run everyday for your heart, don’t run every day, it’s bad for your heart.
I’m not big on extremes because I think extremes are built to fail, extremes are usually not sustainable or enjoyable…
Why do either?
Why keep your job?
Because you only need to do your work and not get fired to successfully pay your bills?
Work is within predictable realms and you can do it and still have a life outside of your work?
Because you do it every day, you know how to do it, you’re generally executing a known pathway/thing/whatever for a great deal of time and you add to a profitable business who in-turn pay you for that time.
Why follow your dreams?
Because start-ups are the thing, they’re amazing, they’re fast and they’re successful and you’ll get bought by google… right?
Because of all those movies where the people stop at nothing to achieve their dreams because that’s what people with spirit do?
Because it feels good and it alleviates that thought that if you died right now and were facing judgement for your life to date, would you be happy with your sum-total?
Because day to day you see the dreams of your childhood fading away and that beautiful Gibson guitar is collecting dust in the corner?
Because it would be fun and fun is good!
Why not both?
Why not do your job and follow your dreams? Why do we have to choose one but not the other?
I am extremely fortunate to have a good job that’s interesting and pays well. I am surrounded by people who I learn from daily, people who know a lot more than I do about a lot of things. I work hard and I enjoy my job.
But my dreams are about robots, computer intelligence and making crazy things that aren’t at all able to turn a profit? It’s unlikely I’ll be doing that in my day job and it’s even less likely that I’d stop doing it at home if I was doing it for my day job.
SO if you follow my patented 3 step formula called Get shit done™ you too can follow your dreams and work.
Step 1: Be Obsessed
I know so many creative people that have brilliant and/or risky ideas that orbit around the things they love to do. Their obsession is so blinding that they just have to succeed, even if they are against the odd, the world or even reason itself — the obsessed get it done.
People ask me where I find the time to do my robots, almost as though the time it takes seems impossible to imagine.
I normally respond with something like:
“I don’t sleep like a normal human.”
It’s an easy throw-away comment, and it’s much easier for people to think that I have more hours in the day than it is for them to comprehend the truth. If I were to answer that question honestly I’d say:
“I am so obsessed with what I do that I make huge sacrifices and I keep focus on my passions.”
Step 2: Be organised
Some time ago I read a bunch of books about being efficient. I learned about the 7 habits of highly efficient people, I learned about the 18 habits of highly productive people, I learned How to Be More Efficient at Work in 3 Simple Steps and I’m continually reading for new ways to get more out of my time.
These high-detail books and theories have really awesome information on how to do a better job of planning and they give people a simple approach and/or check list that can be followed. But the real point is you have to want to achieve, no process can give you motivation even the best process wont beat the couch if you don’t want to do something.
I use a process I call Roles, Goals and Tasks — it was taught to me at a previous workplace and is loosely taken from the 7 habits of highly efficient people. This process doesn’t help me achieve as such, it just helps me to know what I need to do next and reminds me of the things I should be doing.
I split my life into the Roles of my life that matter, being a good person, being a good partner, being a good friend, being a good employee, being a crazy robot spider building guy — each of these Roles are defined by the Goals that make that Role work and each Goal can be broken up into Tasks to achieve that goal, tasks have to be S.M.A.R.T. goals or they get thrown out, then I put all my tasks into my Wunderlist and it reminds me all the time of the things I should be doing and should have done.
Step 3: Make time and do the thing
Here’s the kicker and the most important thing:
You are not going to achieve anything of high-value without investing (and probably a lot of) something that is valuable.
In my case, the high value thing is time.
Good things take time and great things take a great deal of time. Time is the greatest gift to give because you cannot get it back, your time is finite.
If you want to have your normal life and do this amazing thing on top of what you’re already doing then you are dreaming. Your timetable is already full, without very real sacrifices you wont get anything more done.
Full disclosure
So…. I lied, there’s no patented 3 step formula called Get shit done™ it’s not a well thought-out plan, it’s just something that’s worked for me along the way.
I am bad at following my Roles, Goals and Tasks and I often end up deferring things.
I’m easily distracted and often end up watching YouTube videos from VSauce, Tested, Makers Muse or Frank or similar instead of doing what I’m supposed to do.
The really interesting thing is that even though I’m not great at following this plan the fact that I have one and I am working on it rather than approaching life accidentally means that I am a lot more organised which is what I need!
At any time I’ve lacked progress, it’s because I’m not doing the work or I’m not following my plans. There’s lots and lots of excuses but the cold hard fact is that if you’re not walking in the direction of success, you’re not getting any closer to it.
