Defining Success in Life: the Dreamline Exercise
Without concrete goals you’ll never develop concrete plans to achieve them.
Above: One of my all-time dream destinations, Rapa Nui (Easter Island).
Last week Dan and Ian revisited a favorite topic: the Dreamline exercise. Despite having read the 4-hour Workweek at least 5 times, it was listening to the LBP#91 (Are you A Hustler or an Entrepreneur?) back in March that finally inspired me to sit down and go through the motions. (I wrote most of this post then, but this recent podcast inspired me to finish it).
Dreamlining can profoundly change your life. You just have to sit down and do the work.
Like a chess master, you want to see the end-game.
A chess master knows exactly what the end-game is and they’ve already thought through the next 20 moves to get there. When variables change they make small course adjustments, but ultimately check-mate is inevitable, if not in this game then in the next.
What’s surprising about my own life is how often I’ve been operating without a plan. A lot of us drift through life with general goals, like ‘get in better shape’ or ‘travel more’, but without more substance behind them these are just day-dreams.
One of the most effective ways I’ve found to define success in a concrete and action-oriented way is the Dreamlining exercise from the 4-hour Workweek.
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The Key to Freedom isn’t Making More, it’s Spending Less
Photo: El Hombre, the most chilled out man in the world. Chicama, Peru.
If you’re trying to cast off the anchors of modern society, the key isn’t making more money, it’s needing less. Doing this requires voluntarily self-destructing the mindset that makes you think you need more in the first place.
After traveling through ‘less-developed’ countries around the world, returning to the US is a shock. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would need a Chevy Tahoe, the newest version of the iPhone, or any of the other nearly unlimited and arguably useless consumer products available to anyone with a credit card.
I used to be a part of this system, but I’ve been progressively weaning myself from it. Turns out there are some amazing benefits to be had from completely checking out.