This is the third in our series on productivity. We finished purpose and values and now will discuss goals and dreams. These first two blogs provide the foundation that will allow you to identify the projects and tasks to help you achieve these goals and dreams. I will follow this by discussing Projects and tasks. Then we will discuss tools for implementing your workflow to keep track of everything. Then we introduce the concept of personal knowledge management and finally begin discussing implementation in Notion. The Notion implementation will be for those who are not programmers and people who don’t like to spend a lot of time experimenting with a new application, they just want it to work and meet their needs with the least amount of friction.
What are goals and dreams?
Let’s do a little more introspection and identify our goals and dreams. Without these goals and Dreams, we would be like Lewis Carroll’s Alice when talking to the Cheshire cat.
“Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.
Alice:… So long as I get somewhere.
The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.”― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.
This is the entire reason to develop our goals and dreams because we want to know where we are going. Otherwise, how would we know when we got there? Similarly, we need to know our values and purpose to ensure that our goals and actions are consistent with our inner selves.
Dreams are inspirations that come from our imaginations and are often things that are far away in time and may never come true so we can envision. For example, I’ve always wanted to be a hero, to right outrageous wrongs, and save people from others. Now, that is unlikely to happen in the grand sense that I imagined and I may never know if I was a hero to anyone. That is an inner outcome that I’ve always wanted. We must work to make our dreams a reality through our actions.
Making our dreams a reality requires goals. Goals are the means we use along our path to fulfilling and manifesting our dreams. Goals represent the plans to get there. They layout what you will do during the next phase to move towards your dreams.
Remember all the ads in the last decade about turning yourself into Charles Atlas. So having a healthy goal each year can help you develop the Charles Atlas body if that is your dream. Goals help you break the work needed down into chunks you can focus on. And we find that Projects and tasks provide a more granular breakdown of where you want to go and how to get there.
Differences between Goals and dreams?
Dreams by themselves are something we imagine. They are not a part of the reality we live yet. We establish goals that relate to our dreams to help them become reality. Ultimately, though, action makes goals and dreams into reality. Therefore, I am spending these two blogs to set the table for your actions. Productivity is the measure of your actions or inactions. Dreams inspire you, but completed goals change your life. Dreams are what you are thinking about and goals are what you take action on.
“What is Genius?- To aspire to a lofty aim and to will the means to that aim.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“No plan and no action will lead to no results.”
― Germany Kent
“Goals are dreams brought to life.”
― Amy Leigh Mercree
Dreams without goals are just dreams, and they ultimately fuel disappointment.
Denzel Washington
To achieve our goals and dreams requires work and action. Our productivity tools help keep us focused on getting the right things done in the right order to achieve our goals with the least friction.
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