So, I have clearly failed at NaBloPoMo 2009, leaving me an embarrassing two for four on the endeavor overall. Honestly, I was doing just fine until the little backend snafu set me back a few days. By the time I figured it out I was back a few more days.
I retweeted a quote last night that resonated pretty strongly with me (so we will forgive it for being from Ashton Kutcher):
Life is too short to waste. Dreams are fulfilled only through action, not through endless planning to take action. – David J. Schwartz
I very quickly received a reply from Colin, one of my quality Philly twitter friends:
@krisis That’s why I don’t get off on passive conversation of awesome stuff like many seem to. I want to DO.
That, too, resonated. I’m a planner – whether it’s for NaBloPoMo or my unendingly pending new album. In many ways my planning is a good thing, but it can mean that I delight more in the thought of something complex than the joy of doing something simple.
Intrigued by the line of thought, I followed the thought to it’s source. Mr. Schwartz is the author of a book called The Magic of Getting What You Want
Check out this brief excerpt from the book, as compared to both my endless planning and Colin’s response:
Set a time frame, for your dream fulfillment.
It is a fact that people work more efficiently and faster when they impose deadlines or a timetable on what they do. Some time ago, I knew two well-educated young men who had considerable expertise in computer-systems design. … Every weekend for a year they planned their future business. They continued planning for a second year, and a third year. By this time, they finally concluded there was too much competition, so they’d better give up the idea of their own consulting firm.
Imagine how different the result would likely have been if they had agreed at the outset, “We’ll spend our weekends planning for one year (or six months), and then we’ll open our business.”
Keep in mind that as Disraeli said, “Life is too short to be little.” If you live until age 75, you will have spent only 27,391 days, 3,910 weeks, or 912 months on this earth. Life is too short to waste. Dreams are fulfilled only through action, not through endless planning to take action.
As much power as I find in my planning, I need to let those words rule me a little as well. It’s not about winging it, or not planning – it’s just about knowing when to stop planning and start achieving.
What about you? Do you spend more time dreaming than living your dream? Or, do you spend too much time living to have many dreams to live? (Did that make any sense?)
Depends on the dream! I find the biggest obstacle to accomplishment is simply not knowing how to go about something. For instance, if I wanted to start a business, I’d be stalled simply by the enormity of a task that I can’t figure out the steps of. However, that isn’t a goal of mine — not even close. But things that used to seem that level of impossible — publishing poetry, for instance — have gradually started to seem feasible, and I realize that I have slowly been arming myself with the information that I need to do what I want to do. So for me, planning is invaluable in making me feel able, and feeling able is the only way to overcome the panic of trying (where the very premise of trying includes the possibility of failure, never mind Yoda and his cliches.)
There are other dreams that I’m living right now (making my own clothing! cooking new things all the time!) and yet others that I take little steps towards every day and I can see them waiting for me in the near future. Some of them (family-related) are accomplishments for which I’ll never receive any recognition, but they are all the more important for that — for being so personal that I accomplish them not for anyone else, but just for me and those most important to me.
I actually struggle with both. As you know, I’m pretty good with dreaming, and creativity, and living spontaneously. I’m NOT very good with productivity, self-discipline, and making long-term plans that I actually follow through on. I am the queen of half-finished projects and bright ideas that never happened or plans that were much better in dream-form than in reality.
There are instances in which I need to plan things, and then, I plan those things in detail…and inevitably become frustrated if every single detail does not go according to plan. It’s a struggle to let go and just live life and enjoy things as they happen when I planned them a different way.
Planning seems to be equivalent to adding anxiety to life, and I kind of would like to go back to a “do more, think less” strategy. But it seems a lot harder, the older I get! :)