Start with the End in Mind
I was talking with someone yesterday about an opportunity and before we jumped into the opportunity he asked me a hard question: What does your dream life look like? I thought it was powerful in its simplicity and brevity rather than some other questions that might pose for your dreams such as: What do you want to become? What does success look like to you? What makes you happy? This one was matter of fact; don’t lie to yourself: what does your dream life look like?
I delivered my answer rather quickly was happy with my answer and then went back and replayed in my mind what other scenarios in my head might constitute as my dreams.
If I was an executive of a very successful company making big money, would my dreams be fulfilled, no.
If I was in ridiculous shape, overcoming my hip ailments and was exercising 7 days a week feeling like a machine, would my dreams be fulfilled? no.
If Laurelle and I spent every second together traveling the world, would my dreams be fulfilled? no.
If I was writing every day and constantly reading, would my dreams be fulfilled? no.
But aren’t all those things fantastic and sound wonderful? Sure, but at what opportunity cost? I looked at all these extremes and thought wouldn’t it be great to get a taste of all of these.
So my dreams boiled down to how would I want to spend my most limited resource - TIME. It’s not about money. It’s not about the what. It’s about the allocation of time.
93% of people don’t write out their dreams. I’m part of that 93%…until now, so here goes….
My dream life is to have the utmost balance between five things - a 20% rule if you will.
20% of my time focused on my family. That’s Laurelle and our marriage. That’s my kids one day, attending every game, every recital, etc. and being a super dad. This time is 100% deep presence with them rather than the scrambled and jumbled time our busy world affords.
20% of my time focused on learning, exploring and sharing. That’s traveling, observing the world, reading, asking questions, going down the rabbit hole of an article about lions’ mating habits or reading about the last kings of shanghai and then addressing the other side of the equation with writing and speaking about those experiences and observations.
20% of my time focused on experiential recreation and fitness. Playing golf, doing yoga, biking, hiking, fly fishing, and other activities.
20% of my time focused on spiritual growth and philanthropy. That’s time spent learning torah, praying, meditation, studying the great philosophers, mentoring students, teaching and giving back with time rather than money.
20% of my time focused on creating something from scratch and investing. Whether that’s building a custom made table, building and designing software, or looking for investment opportunities with people that I trust and love to work with - I want to dedicate both my time and my money to creating value in the world.
So there you have it - my dream life as told by my 32 year old self. I expect that those percentages will drift over time but the search for balance is the route and the dream is sufficiency and mindfulness of the equation. This seems to track with other approaches I’ve taken in the past. I already have my mission statement and wrote this over five years ago (April 2017) and have made it clear in other writings:
"To lead by example, constantly be learning, instill Jewish wisdom into myself, my family and life, and experience the world to build empathy and understanding to share with others."
If your dreams match your mission statement then I feel like you’ve got the right north star in mind. I’ve got the end in mind - so are my daily actions leading me one step closer to realizing these dreams? That’s the hard question I ask myself today and that’s the hard question you should be asking yourself every day.