Writing about something you’re not good at is not easy, as you have to be self critical and admit that you’re not where you want to be. At the same time, getting it out should help to regain focus and get back on the course.

I 2012, I’ve read for the first timeThe 4 Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. While there are many views on the self help literature, this book came to me at the right moment and gave me the focus and organisation I needed to start being more productive at work (which helped me all the yeas since then). One of the great things about the book (and Tim’s work in general) is focus not only on goals setting, but especially on keeping track and making yourself aware if you’re progressing or not, so that you can adjust.

While may of the things in the book are outdated or would not work for me, there is one thing I try to keep in my life since then (and retry, as I fail in the process over time) - “Dreamlining”.

Tim is better at explaining this than I am (check out this blog post), and while his accent on he cost of things that you want is quite big there (which are often less than you think), the key thing for me is to set my goals and then having a status update with myself regularly, to see if and how I progress. Especially when you have goals such as.

While this might sound dull and ineffective, the coming back to these is the key element of the exercise. Worst thing is to set the goal and then not having it front of you often enough for it to stimulate you to do something.

I must admit I’m not very good at this and since 2012, I was quite infrequent in planning and keeping myself accountable. But while life gets sometimes in the way, recalibration back to what your goals are (and how they might have changed) is always a good step.

With the recent change of my job I decided to be more focused on this, and aside of planning for the year and each quarter, I have a short check of for top goals every Friday. Just writing my thoughts down helps to see if I’m on track or there are things that I need to change (such as “stop putting money into crypto at least until Christmas, as you have a better use of them at the moment, and the correction will anyway come and reduce today’s investments to zero”). 5 minutes are enough. We all have 5 minutes once a week, right?

To wrap up, as always, there will be moments where I will put dreamlining aside, and then will come back again. But at times when I have capacity to focus on it, I intent to put the effort in to do what I’ve set out to do. And knowing where to focus your energy is often the key difference between going forward step by step and running in a circle.

Happy dreamlining!