Our lives these days are pretty much made up of work and mindless relaxation to wind down and then prepare for work again. We work a minimum of 8 hours a day and in addition we have two factor into that the preparation for work and transportation to and from work which easily adds another couple of hours at best. So now we’re up to 10 hours a day, 5 days a week. Many also do much more than this and some are working 10-12 hours a day, others are making hour long commutes or working on nights and weekends as well. Basically our lives are consumed by work! In addition, many of us hate our jobs and have to deal with crappy coworkers, abusive bosses and pay that is nowhere near what we deserve for our efforts.

When we were kids and dreamed of being “all grown up” is this what we pictured? Probably not. We pictured excitement, adventure, passion, travel and fun! We wanted to join the Circus, become a Fireman, be a sports star or join the Hollywood movie crowd, not be a an accountant or work in a cubicle and be yelled at by a dweeb named Stan.

You hear it all the time… “Someday, I’ll do X, someday I’ll do Y. I can’t wait until I can do ______. But is someday ever going to come? Not on its own. Listen, people are changing their lives everyday. They are developing a plan, working hard to learn new skills and literally living their actual dreams. It’s not about waiting for “someday,” it’s about creating your “someday” and doing it NOW!

But how do we do this in a world where we are so busy? It seems impossible. The good news is that it’s not! It’s just like any other skill…. Before you have learned it there is no understanding of how it is accomplished, we just say, “Oh, they’re so lucky.” But the reality is that once you have mastered the skills to create change in your life, there’s no magic or luck to it at all! You’re simply utilizing age old tools for success:

  1. Envision what you want.
  2. Make a plan to get there.
  3. Put your plan into action.

These 3 things are simply repeated over and over again until the result is achieved and you are living your best life!

Our enemy in all of this is “Time,” and the first thing we need to do for success is to control that enemy. It’s not enough to just say, “I’m going to work harder on my dreams,” we have to work smarter instead.

I have found four things that work to make this easier.

  1. Know where you’re going
  2. Know what it takes to get there.
  3. Put the work in
  4. Maintain a Positive Spirit

Know where you’re going

When we think about life we tend to put “work” first and then we will focus on things like our dreams “if we have the time.” In other words, our real goals are “Extra” and our survival goals are “Priority.” There are several problems with this. The first is the Whirlwind… the chaos of life that overwhelms us everyday. The unexpected that we simply. Have to take care of and frankly, that never ends. What do we do when these unexpected things pop up? We act shocked first of al which is silly because they literally happen to us everyday. Secondly, we chip away at our time to work on our dreams and sacrifice those for the Whirlwind. But the reality is that the Whirlwind will always be there. No matter how hard we work, no matter how much we prepare, we are still going to face the whirlwind of unexpected occurrences and people who just need us to do X,Y and Z. What goes by the wayside? Our dreams.

Imagine this scenario. Your friend calls you and says, “Hey I need to move today, my workers fell through and I need some help.” If we were working at our job during that time we would say, “Oh man, I wish I could but I have a work meeting!” Our friend would completely understand and simply move onto the next person. But would we ever say, “Ooh I wish I could but I have a meeting with myself tonight to meditate and work on my dreams.” Our friend would look at us like we had two heads. But why is a work meeting at a job you hate more important than envisioning and planning your future? For one simple reason, we do not consider it “work,” we consider it play.

If you think about this you will quickly realize that lots of times you have thought to call someone and ask them for something and then said, “Oh, they’re at work” and just moved on. But have you ever once said, “Oh, I can’t call Quinn because I know he is working on his dreams and future from 7-9 every night?” Well? Why not? Not only do we not expect this, but many of us would be offended if someone didn’t cancel their “personal work” and give us their time, even though we would be completely ok with someone blowing us off to go sit in a cubicle and push buttons for Stan. How warped is that?

The first step to changing your life is changing your mindset. “Working on yourself” is just that… “work.” It needs to become at least as important as working for Stan and you as the boss need to take no shit from the employee who also happens to be you…. Make yourself show up and work hard!

If you don’t consider meditation and brainstorming work just try it every day for a month… your tune will change very quickly.

Part of every successful plan is envisioning where you want to go. Think about planning a vacation trip. We search destinations, read about them, check reviews and references, watch Youtube videos, talk to other people who have been there and then finally we go into action and purchase plane tickets and book that hotel. It’s hard work! Why should the journey of our life be any different?

We need to take the time to envision and dream about what we want our future to be like. Where do we want to live? What would daily life be like? What do we do for money? What’s the food like? He weather? How do I get to (our have to) dress? Who are my companions? What hobbies do I have? In other words…. Dream. This is the first step of our “Work.”

Know what it takes to get there
We’ve had the dream stage, now it’s time for the research phase. This is the point where we take our dream and we drill down into the nitty gritty.

  • How do I make this happen?
  • What are the obstacles?
  • How have other people gotten around these obstacles?
  • What are the pros and cons of this decision?
  • What new skills do I need to learn?

Put the work in

You’ve all seen those infamous 72 ounce steak promotions. It’s a massive slab of beef, slapped onto a plate that you get for free if you finish in one sitting. How insane. But ask yourself this…. Why is that so difficult? Is it difficult to eat 72 ounces of steak? Not at all. The only thing that is difficult is the “timer” restriction. But imagine you had a week or a month to eat that steak. Wouldn’t that be much easier? Of course! The secret to working on yourself is to give yourself small bits of time with easily accomplished objectives and do so on a consistent basis.

For example, if I told you that you needed to spend 100 hours learning something and then you would be able to live your dreams most of us would say, “Great, now if I just had the time. Oh well.” But the reality is that this is extremely easy to accomplish if you break it into bite size pieces and make it part of your schedule.

Here’s a scenario. You’re a sports fan and you sit on the coach every Sunday and watch the games for 2 hours. What if you were to give that up and instead take the 2 hours a week and work on your dreams? Well, in 1 year of this you would have put over 100 hours of work into that. This is literally like getting a Bachelor’s degree.

How about this? Take 1 night a week, let’s say Wednesday. Take 3 hours that night and clear your schedule. The only thing that happens is you work on you.

  • Can you help me with my homework?
  • Can you go here or there with me?
  • I just want to relax and watch Netflix.

No. You are busy that night. This is YOUR night to work on YOUR dreams and make YOUR future look like YOU want it to. If you did this for 6 months you would accumulate 78 hours of study. Think that might make a difference?

Maintain a positive spirit

Just like this rest of life, this isn’t easy. You’re going to be tired from your job and not want to come home and work on yourself. You’re going to be distracted by other people or things. You’re going to try sitting down and working and just not be able to focus and then slam your laptop closed in frustration and say, “Fuck it, I’ll start next week.” Once again, this is hard work!

But the reality is that this stuff happens at our job also doesn’t it? How many times have you just sat at work and got nothing done because your mind wasn’t working correctly or you were over tired or depressed or whatever? We don’t get to leave work just because our creative juices aren’t flowing or we’re hungover. Why should working for ourselves be any different?

Once you schedule your “work on yourself” time it needs to be set in stone. If you’re calling in sick for that more than you’re calling in sick to your job then we have a problem don’t we?

For this reason it’s important to develop and maintain a positive attitude. You show up to your scheduled time, no matter what. If all you can do at that time is meditate and come to a peaceful place then so be it. If all you can do is sit and stare at your laptop screen and never write down one dream or implementation strategy then so be it…. Show up. Value this time and treat yourself well! Congratulate yourself!

“Ok, Quinn, this was harder than it seemed and you didn’t much done but you did it at least! Next Wednesday is going to be even better.”

If you approach it this way and speak positively about what you’re working on then you will get better and more efficient every week.

The good thing is that once you start doing this you will be thinking about it more and more and you will somehow find lots of “extra” time to work on it even more. For example, you’ll start listening to podcasts or audio books whenever you’re driving somewhere or in a waiting room for something. You may even find that there is lots of “extra” time at work….

How many times have you sat around at work and waited for people to show up for a meeting? Why not pull out the latest book you’ve been reading and knock out 10 minutes of dream building?

Now, I hate when people dispense philosophical advice without specific example and applications so let’s break this down with a concrete example so you can start envisioning how this can change your life.

The 26 Week Plan:

Become a Digital Nomad

I’ll use one of my personal examples of how I got started in my current lifestyle and how I became a digital nomad.

Weeks 1-5: Know where you’re going
This is our dreaming and envisioning stage. Our goal here is to immerse ourselves into the Digital Nomad world and make a decision about what we specifically want to do. We’re going to give this plenty of time… 5 whole weeks…. That’s 15 hours of just dreaming and envisioning.

We want to spend this time seeing what this lifestyle is actually like and the best way to do that is watch other people who are doing it. Get YouTube, read blogs, join a Facebook community, hit up travel TikTok and start soaking it all in.

What types of travel are you excited about? What do you not like? What countries are calling to you? What cultures and languages seem enticing? What are travelers doing for work? Where are they staying? Short travel or long travel? Boat? Plane? RV? What makes you think, “That would be awesome?”

During this time take notes about your feelings and desires, little tips and tricks you learn, questions you have or things you might need to do. Research and learn about the countries and dive deep into them. Print out pictures of where you want to go, hang a map on the wall and stick thumbtacks in it, listen to music or watch videos from this countries and listen to podcasts, read travel blogs and watch videos about these places. Learn about remote jobs or freelancing and start researching what you might like to do with skills you have or what skills you might be able to learn to make money on the road.

By the end of the 5 weeks you should know where you want to go and how you want to travel and have a whole bunch of knowledge about all of this.

Weeks 6-10: Know what it takes to get there.
Time for the nitty gritty. Your journal know becomes a whiteboard with your to do list! You’re going to use the next 5 weeks to get organized and make your plan.

For example, let’s say that you have decided to travel Europe for 1 year. You will need to learn about the Schengen Visa program and the different countries that are in this. Are you going to do a Workaway program for a place to live? Rent an AirBnb? Work as a house sitter or pet sitter? Are you going to get a remote job or freelance? These are the types of questions we are answering here in order to draw up our plan for implementation.

Weeks 11-26 Put the work in
We’re doing this! You’re getting excited now…. It’s actually going to happen! Your confidence has increased because of our last two stages! Your dream is crystal clear now and you’re not only hungering for take off day but you’re excited because you have an actionable plan and all you need to do now is implement it!

This is the stage when you’re taking a course on becoming a web developer or a life coach, learning how to run your own business, establishing freelance accounts on Upwork or Fiverr and building your portfolio, connecting with people around the world and booking Pet sitting gigs and so forth.

The Secret

When you commit to yourself 1 night a week for 3 hours and you start working on this stuff you will miraculously find more time. It’s just like going to the gym and working out. You develop the basic habit and then as results start coming it becomes more and more important to you and you will remove other things from your life to make room for your new focus. You will find yourself watching travel shows overnight and skipping network TV or Netflix and guess what? You’ll be happier and you won’t miss that stuff a bit!

Positive Mindset

This us hugely important for success. You have to talk yourself up and treat yourself well. This is much easier if you have learned my 9X Rule!  Be a good, supportive friend and an amazing boss to yourself. Speaking of bosses…. Guess who makes the rules now? Yeah… YOU. So, don’t allow yourself to get discouraged or pressured. If you want to take the 26 week plan and make it a 48 week plan or a 52 week plan then go ahead. It’s your life and you’re the boss. Be open to change, be open to taking charge and doing what YOU want to.