Burt Rutan and friends built a spaceship in just a few years. It only cost about $25 million.

What’s your dream?

These days a lot of people are asking themselves, “How do I find a job?”

Simple:
Get a copy of What Color is Your Parachute?.
Buy it. Take it out from your library.

Richard Nelson Bolles has been writing and rewriting this perennially best -selling career and job hunting guide since 1970.

Last August, after an expected promotion became an unexpected (and indefinite) vacation, I decided to accept this sudden influx of free time (and unemployment checks) and use it to seek out my dream job.

What Color is Your Parachute?, even the 1990′s version at my local library, changed my life. And I haven’t even read the whole thing.

Giving Thanks

One of the things that really appealed to me about Parachute was the caring and compassionate tone. Bolles ends the preface to the 2009 edition with this sentence:

I am a deeply grateful man.

This is profound to me because I’ve found that gratitude is an emotion of the wise. We get pleasure from anything we receive, but gratification describes a deeper feeling that can only come when we have the wisdom to recognize the value of the gift. You can’t get this wisdom without giving. Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman says it well:

The exercise of kindness is a gratification, in contrast to a pleasure. As a gratification it calls on your strengths to rise to an occasion and meet a challenge. Kindness is not accompanied by a separable stream of positive emotion like joy; rather, it consists in total engagement and in loss of self-consciousness. Time-stops.

- from Authentic Happiness, pg. 9

Once you know that giving is gratifying, the universe is yours.

It may seem that I am going off on a tangent here, but the idea of service as a path to well-being is central to Bolles’s book and talks about success in a different tone than a self-help book like, say, The 4-hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss.

Digression: Freedom vs Satisfaction – What color is your 4 hour workweek?

There was something bothering me about Ferriss and it wasn’t the extra “S” in his name. His book got me excited and encouraged me to move out of my comfort zone. I wrote about one of Ferriss’s great ideas a few weeks ago and wrote this post bemoaning the fact that someone else wrote about Ferriss in a way that was funnier and more engaging than I would have. So, it is obvious that I admire the ideas I’ve found in The 4-hour Workweek.

But Ferriss’s book, and the approach to happiness it proscribes, lacks something that completely imbues Parachute…gratitude.

Where The 4-hour Workweek offers ways to manipulate the System so that it serves you, What Color is Your Parachute? asks precise questions to help you determine how you can happily be of service within the System. Ferriss encourages my sense of entitlement. He talks less about the spiritual satisfaction you can get out of being of service in a good job, and more about the spiritual malaise that you can escape by getting out of your comfort zone and the grip of employers.

In order to live well, I think it is important to be able to break free from the things that are holding you back, but if that is not accompanied by acts of kindness, the feeling that you are of service to a greater good, then all the freedom in the world will not bring you the happiness that feeling purposeful can.

Before reading What Color is Your Parachute? I did not think I could find happiness in the work-a-day world. Now I know better. There are thousands of places where I could happily serve.

My Top 7  Gleanings from What Color is Your Parachute?

1. Informational interviews – Employers hire people they know first. Be known.
2. Thank you cards – Especially if you are authentically thankful, a thank you note will make you stick in an employers head. If your card is attractive and sits on their desk for a week, then it is likely that they never forget you. When an opening comes up, your more likely to get a call.
3. Know thyself – As a pretty introspective guy, I was shocked that a simple exercise in a book could clarify my skills, values, and desires to a degree that 32 years of thinking hadn’t.  In less than a long weekend, I had created a “flower diagram” that reveals a ton of information about who I am and where I will be happy.
4. There are always jobs – Even with unemployment rates higher than a horse’s eye, the “constant churning of human activity” creates millions of job-openings a month. You may have to settle for a temporary job for now, but if you continue to approach organizations that interest you, your butt will be poised above the seat in the giant game of musical chairs known as the job market.
5. Doing a reflective, “life-changing” job hunt has an 86% success rate, while looking for employers’ job-postings on the Internet has a 4-10% success rate. – Sending resumes out at random works 7% of the time. Answering local want ads – 5-24%. In other words, the methods that seem most obvious are often the least effective.
6. Show up in person – This goes along with #1 and #5. If you have more than a virtual presence in your employer’s field of perception, you are more likely to be remembered.
7. Prepare for interviews - Parachute offers tons of tips for maximizing your chances of having a successful interview. Just a few:
   • The 50-50 Rule – Half the time, you should be listening. This one is a tough one for me because I tend to ramble
   • Give 20-second to 2-minute replies
   • There are only five questions that matter - You don’t need to memorize a list of dozens of possible questions because you can answer them all by knowing the answers to these five questions: Why are you here? What can you do for us? What kind of person are you? What distinguishes you from nineteen other people who can do the same task as you? Can I afford you?
   • Research – Not just the mission statement of the company and the job description, but the personality of the person who makes the hiring decisions.

This list barely scratches the surface.

What Color is Your Parachute? is truly a manual for life.

Good Advice, Bad Jargon from the Author of The 4-hour Workweek

Timothy Ferriss - making up words, making people jealous.

I don’t like some words. They feel embarrassing when you say them out loud – dietary supplement, self-help, interfacing, mingle. I can’t say or even write these words without cringing. Dreamlining is one of them.

It shouldn’t be legal to take any two words and slam them together…

Dreamlining, which I will henceforth refer to as DL, is a concept in Timothy Ferriss’s The 4-hour Workweek. DL has gotten a lot of tread on the internets and it is not because of the cool name.

Obviously, as you can infer from the two original words which were so rudely stuck together, DL is about putting a timeline to your dreams. Carpe diem plays a big part here, the recommendation being either a six-month or one-year timeline.

DL is also about putting a dollar sign on your dreams.

By doing a little math, you can bring that dream out of fantasy land, chop it up into little chunks, and start working on it today. The big idea with DL is that anyone can sit down, with minimal research and figure out what their wildest dreams will cost, and what it will take to make them come true, starting right now.

The coolest thing, I think, is breaking down the cost of your dreams to the daily level. But that comes at the end. First, you have to figure out what your dreams are.

This part should be easy.

It isn’t.

What do you want out of life? Imagine, you can have anything, be anything, or do anything. What would you choose? What do you get when you cross an elephant and a rhino?

For most people I know, the answer to these questions is the same: Hell if I know (Elephino). I spent most of my life having vague ideas about what I didn’t want, but knowing next to nothing about what I did want. In fact, one of Dreaming Right’s big questions is “How does one figure out what to want?”.

Ferriss says, in a nutshell, “just do it.” His approach is more about going with your gut than rationally analyzing your values. He asks that you imagine that you cannot fail, and you are 10 times smarter than the rest of the world. Easy, right? Now, list 5 things you dream of having, doing, and being.

If this is still incredibly hard, Ferriss has a few other suggestions:

• What would you do, day to day, if you had $100 million in the bank?
• What would make you most excited to wake up in the morning to another day?
• Still stuck? – then list:
  • 1 place to visit,
  • 1 thing to do before you die,
  • 1 thing to do daily,
  • 1 thing to do weekly,
  • 1 thing you’ve always wanted to learn.

If you are like me, you can easily think of 5 things you want, and almost as easily, you come up with things to do, but when you have to decide what you want to be you

What may make deciding what you want to be even easier is the next step: convert each being into a doing. That is, determine what action would mean that you had become what you set out to be. “Being brave” becomes “give a speech in front of 100 or more people.” “Fluent in Spanish” becomes “carry on a 10 minute conversation with a native speaker.”

The next step is to pick the four dreams “that would change it all”. That’s it.

When I asked my girlfriend how to describe this step, she said, “Yippee!” I think this is the approach that you should take through every step of DL.

Choosing your top four dreams from a list is not merely a mental game that is fun to play. It is a real decision to manifest a better life. This will feel exciting. Let it.

The Ubiquitous Next Action

What now? No. Really. What now?

That’s the next step. Figure out what you can do right now to start working towards your dreams. Often this step is brainstorming or researching. For example, if you plan to do a solo sailing trip to Bermuda, your next step might be to find articles on blue-water sailing. For becoming fluent in Spanish, I choose to read about the best learning techniques as my next action.

Nothing will happen without the next action.

Ferriss goes further and suggests that you write down three steps, for now, tomorrow, and the next day, all to be completed before 11 in the morning, and all to be completed in under five minutes. (Or, you can be like me and make progress in fits and starts).

Dream Accounting

It is surprisingly easy to calculate the exact cost of your dreams.

First, you have to determine your monthly expenses. If this step intimidates you, Ferriss has a DL spreadsheet and calculators that automatically do the arithmetic for you. Alternatively, just add up the past 4 months of expenses and divide by 4 to determine your average expenses.

Then, multiply that number by 1.3. This is for savings and any expensive surprises that life tends to throw your way.

The final step is to determine the costs of the four dreams you picked, divide by 6 or 12, depending on your timeline, to calculate the TMI or Target Monthly income. I have a feeling your dreams are much less expensive than you imagined.

There are are only two problems in life, (1) you know what you want, and you don’t know how to get it; and/or (2) you don’t know what you want.

- Steven Snyder, quoted by David Allen, p.251 of the incredible Getting Things Done.

I love this quote because if you begin to think about it, you begin to think about the Big Picture. Yet it is so simple. David Allen, the author of the famous Getting Things Done, goes a little farther, asserting that the solution to life’s two problems is simply:

1. Make it up.
2. Make it happen.

This makes me cringe a little, because making things up and making things happen can be incredibly complicated.

I’d rather not issue an imperative. Instead, I like to look at the questions that Mr. Snyder’s wonderful quote evokes:

1. What do you want?
2. What are you doing to get it?

One would think the whole world would be asking themselves and each other twenty-four seven -

• What do I want? How am I getting it?
• What do you want? How are you getting it?

They are THE questions to be asking.

Do you know what you want?

If you’re like most people, you aren’t quite sure what you want and you’re not one-hundred percent on how to get it.

The question, “Do you know what you want?” is really another version of the more dramatic, “What is your purpose?”

This post is not going to take that on. Sorry.

Instead, I’ll take a stab at clarifying (1)what purpose is and (2)why it is a good idea to have a purpose.

What is purpose?

Purpose is a slippery word, almost as slippery as “meaning.” We all agree that life should have meaning, but what does that mean?

I think the meaning of life lies within relationships – with others, with the universe, a higher power, and the relationship you have with yourself. When asked what gives their life meaning, most people say things like, “my children,” “Jesus,” “my connection to nature,” or “my dream of the future.”

Meaningfulness is the quality of relating well to something larger.

Purposefulness is the quality of being decided about your relationship with that larger thing.

We are in a relationship with the world. It can be a one-sided affair, where the world makes all the decisions. Or it can be reciprocal. Symbiotic.

The currents of our lives will knock us about, no matter what, but if we decide to look around, learn and decide which way we want to swim, we can find the eddies to take us where we want to go.

Why be purposeful?

• To decide instead of having decisions made for you – The first 24 years of my life happened without purpose. I found myself a broke college drop-out who had forgotten any dreams he once had, living in his hometown, addicted to booze, pills, and weed, having never made a real decision. When I decided to clean up, after much kicking and screaming, it felt like the first real decision I had ever made.If you do not have purpose, you do not choose. You are led by other people or your own whims.

  Whims are often unhealthy.
  Other people are often unhealthy.

  You are faced with choices everyday. You will either react to them impulsively or purposefully. Do I have to tell you which way is better?

• You are more likely to do what you want – A dreaded phrase of childhood: “If you’re lookin’ for something to do…” was always immediately followed by something like, “that woodpile needs stackin’,” or “the lawn needs mowin’.” (No, my parents weren’t from the South. I just don’t feel like usin’ Gs.)If you are purposeful, you will not have to do chores.

  Our culture is filled with activities that will keep you occupied but never satisfied. If we are not purposeful, we often end up gorging ourselves on a diet of television, fast-food, and consumer goods, doing what we are told instead of what we decide.

• You are more likely to get what you want – Sure, letting the tides toss you about might land you in a Tahitian paradise, but you’ve got a better chance if you plot a course and set your sails. Better yet, why not figure out how much a month in Tahiti would cost and start saving (dreamline style!).
• The ability to shape our future is a uniquely human gift, not to be squandered – To have a purpose is to have a vision of the future. To imagine a future, and to go about actualizing it, is the most awesome thing – it feels good and it is how the human world progresses.
• It leaves more time to be purposeless – If you are intentional about your actions, you can do the things that need to be done in less time. Without purpose, unimportant things will take up all your time and energy, leaving no time to play. Personally, if I don’t make plans for the day, I end up too tired and guilty to enjoy myself. If I work towards my goals for as little as one hour, I can go on any adventure guilt free.

What are the downsides of having a purpose?

Having to look at yourself – Spooky. Gets in the way of watching TV.

Getting caught in the rat race – “Always working towards your purpose” means “always working.” And we know what work does to Jack…………….(it makes him try to murder his family and chase his little boy through a hedge maze, with an ax).

Loosing your free-spiritedness – “Dude, you are always busy working towards your dreams. You never have time to hang.” People with purpose never let it all hang out. They are never spontaneous.

But what are the real downsides of having purpose?…….A bunch of bullshit and rationalizations.

I am still refining my purpose, adding dreams to my list, dreamlining, revising my misson statement, and exploring other ways of “making it up”, but I have acquired a few techniques, exercises, and tips which I will attempt to present to you, dear reader, in the very near future.