Action is the key. The hardest step to living your dream is actually getting down to work, and not the part concerning research and planning. For example, it has been a year since I came to the idea of starting this blog, much time passed in contemplating the content, format and title that a year went by without much progress. This lack of progress trigged all sorts of external pressure that transformed into self-doubt and made my pursuit to be more difficult. I had to rally with twice much energy to get myself back on track.
The biggest challenge in chasing your dream is to manage the life outside of your pursuit. Friends, family, and most of all—a job—are constantly pulling you away from being able to dedicate your time in pursuit of your dream. But this is no excuse since people with ambitions are usually very apt in completing other tasks such as getting ready for work in the morning, mowing the lawn in the afternoon while finding time to organize a best friend’s surprise birthday party that there should be time for people to pursue their dreams. And if that hypothesis is true then we can all agree that we have distracted ourselves by surrendering to the daily routines as opposed to facing the difficult task of pursuing our dream that may be obscure.
I am both a witness and perpetrator to the act of telling friends and family about a great idea but did too little to bring it to fruition. This terrible phenomenon plagues many dreams from actualization and has crushed thousands of innovations and wonders from coming into existence. Luckily, during my constant tug of war with stalling, I spotted several key components along the way of my pursuit. The most important of which are prioritizing goals and reframing my own attitudes. While certain concepts such as reframing is too much to explain in one article, here are the steps that can help you with completing your project:
Prioritizing:
- There are 148 hours a week. Create an itemized list of at least 7 activities that take up most of your time with an estimated percentage next to each task. For example: Work 40 hours (27%), Sleep 56 hours (37%), Watching TV 14 hours (9%), Gym 8 hours (5%), Bars 16 hours (10%), etc.
- List one item you would like to complete in a year. For example: finding a new job, starting a business, finding a spouse, etc.
- Now incorporate what you did in activity 2 with activity 1 and you should have 8 items on the list. Reflect on each of these activities and the distribution of time for 3 minutes.
- Set a new goal to reduce or even eliminate 1 activity you listed that took up a lot of your time, but more importantly find a spot on your schedule that will help you with increasing your time spend on completing your new goal.
- List your goals on paper with your new goal being on top of the list and place it to the location or an item connected to the specific activity you are trying to eliminate or reduce the amount of time involved.
- Train yourself to work by claiming a physical location as your workbench that allows you to focus on your project; this can be an office in your house, a quiet room in the library or on the campus of your nearest college, or a coffee shop (as a last resort), etc., and make sure as soon as you have completed tasks that are obligatory such as working at your day job or paying your bills at City Hall that you immediately move to your workbench and put in at least 30 minutes of quality time before doing other tasks.
Unlike most self-help books and articles that focus only on identifying your goals and problems, Step 5 and 6 are critically important since they are the how-to-dos in connecting other steps into action.
I will explain in another post in regards to working with fatigue and emotions that get in the way of doing work. Please leave me comments below with your thoughts.