Lisa Dempster wrote a cool article about achieving your dreams. I just want to provide a short rebuttal.
1. Know what you want
I know what she means. I want lots of things. Often it’s tempting to grab low-hanging fruit because it’s close by (the very reason Sarah and I leave fruit in random places in our house. It goes mouldy).
My solution is to grab that low-hanging fruit and eat it. Usually it tastes great! I am actually talking about goals and tasks now, not fruit.
I fit the low-hanging banana tasks in around the chicken parma that is my goals. Occasionally I make a mistake and barf up a little bit of banana, then apologise.
2. Recognise distractions
Distractions are great. Being distracted by the fruit takes you away from your big stupid parma-goals, and may give you the perspective you need to realise that the parma is less delicious than you thought.
3. Be selfish
This I disagree with:
No one worth knowing will be upset with you for choosing to focus on doing things that will bring you satisfaction and happiness. (Not to mention, successful and motivated people are generally pretty damn awesome to be around, so being selfish about goal-achieving might actually make your relationships better!)
All your good friends and family will think you’re an arsehole if all you do is work and talk about your parma-goal and how focused you are all the time.
If I laser-focused on my parma-goal (or on real parmas) and let nothing stop me, I’d never see my wife and she’d be justifiably angry at me. And I’d be super fat.
You do actually need to allow for time in your life when you are not being successful or motivated. I call this “ridin’ the fruitscape”.
4. Be organised
No.
5. Trust the process
This is absolutely true, and otherwise known as “Don’t be a bitter shit”.
In conclusion, I think I can safely say that Lisa eats far too much parma, and must really have some more fruit.