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.

What did you promise these guys?

Imagine shame.

Awful, isn’t it – something you want to avoid. For me, shame is the worst. It’s like I’m a broken machine, beyond hope of repair.

Now visualize success.

Listen to it, taste it, feel it. This should feel good.

I ask you to take a look at these two states of being to get a sense of their ability to motivate. Behaviorist psychologists explain our actions as either reward-seeking or punishment-avoiding. They have proven that the carrot and stick are highly effective. (If you want to increase your writing habit using negative conditioning, check out Write or Die).

When you tell all your friends, acquaintances, and readers that you have set a goal, you are activating the dynamic tension between your desire to accomplish that goal and your dread of having to tell everyone that you failed.

If your a people-pleaser, like me, publicly committing to your goals is probably the number one method of getting them done. I quit drinking this way…twice. (I started drinking when I was no longer around anyone who had heard me make the public commitment.)

My Public Announcement

I set my Gmail to autorespond.

Here is what it says:

I won’t be checking my email until January 4th. I am scrambling to launch my website, dreamingright.com, before I start my new job.

I hope I don’t let you down!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/s4G4mcYOXMA&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1]

I’m freaking out! It’s about my economic situation. I am broke.

To make matters worse, some idiotic decisions are coming back to haunt me. I have an awful habit of driving without insurance. A habit that caused me to accrue over $700 dollars in fines.

Luckily, I paid them off.

Unluckily, I got pulled over last week and found out my license was suspended and my tabs were expired. I had a court date yesterday, which I totally forgot about.

Now there is a warrant out for my arrest!

These tickets are probably going to end up costing me a thousand dollars.

I don’t have a job. I’m freaking out.

What now?

Well, the first thing I did was to call the court. They told me I could come in next Thursday and pay 50 bucks for an opportunity to explain why I missed the court date.

I’m still freaking out, but not as badly.

The problem is that the freak-out is self-justifying. It was triggered by my sudden realization that I spaced-out such an important thing, but it continues because it is finding tons of reasons in my sub-conscious to perpetuate itself, things floating around that feed it.

Here is what my freak-out is telling me:

• You are lazy.
• The economy is bad.
• You are crippled by fear.
• You are neglecting your responsibilities.
• You are lazy. (This idea is particularly hardy freak-out food)

My gut is tied in a knot and I feel like crying. Actually, the knot is loosening a little bit. I am starting to feel better.

Why?

I have identified what my freak-out is feeding on. Looking closely at piece of freak-out food, I see that it may be either true and within my control, true and outside of my control, or simply not true.

Not true:

I am not lazy, I am prolific. I am not crippled by fear, I am bravely examining my fear.

Outside of my control:

There is nothing I can do about the economy.

True:

Perhaps I have been neglecting my responsibilites. I can do something about that.

So, after doing what I can about the trigger for my freak-out, I proceed to eradicate the three flavors of freak-out food.

Neutralizing False Fears

I’m just figuring this out myself, but these techniques seem to work on the things that simply aren’t true.

Looking at them - most fears that are obviously false will shrivel under the light of observation. “Look how much I have accomplished in the past month, how can I be lazy.”

Affirmations – “I am prolific and productive. I am brave.” These cheesy statements are often quite effective, even if they remind you of Stuart Smalley.

I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me!

Writing about them - write a list, persuasive essay, (or a blog post!) giving all the reasons why the fear is a false one. Writing has always given me clarity when I’ve been overwhelmed by emotion, although it doesn’t usually produce very good writing.

Accepting things that are out of your control

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy. – Leo Buscaglia

One of the biggest things that we worry about that is completely out of our control is the past. I can not go back and make that court date, so, intellectually at least, I know I shouldn’t be worrying, much less freaking out about it. I find it helpful to remind myself:

I am not responsible for my past actions, only for the present consequences of those actions.

I am not responsible for the actions of others.

and, for good measure…

I did not break the economy.

Acceptance is also a key part of the serenity prayer, another great thing I learned from 12-step programs:

“…grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference…”

Doing something about legitimate fears

Break them down into parts – What are my responsibilities? They are creations of society and my own personal morality. I am responsible for keeping my word, keeping myself fed, paying taxes, and doing what is best for my well-being, which includes helping rather than harming the people I come into contact with. Which of these responsibilities am I neglecting right now? And what can I do about it?

Take action – The only real responsibility I have been neglecting is the promise to myself and my readers to post regularly on this blog. So, guess what? Here it is, a new post! Taking action feels great.

Oscar Rodgers put’s it simply:
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And don’t over-analyze, you can never predict what course events will take, just do the next right thing and know that you are doing everything you can to vanquish your freak-out.

PS – 48 days with no booze!

My 30 day experiment is quite over – What do I do now?

In this post I’ll answer one small part of that question: What do I do about my drinking now?

Here are my options:

• Lay down an ultimatum – I will never drink again.

Pros: Being the decider.
Cons: Being like “the decider” – a man who’s lack of doubt led him to be the worst president ever. (Here is a great article by Bob Woodard about Dubya’s decision to start a war)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFefI29TVi4&hl=en&fs=1]

• Do it one day at a time – In true 12 step fashion, I will declare, as often as necessary, that, just for today, I am not going to pick up a drink.

Pros: Making a bite-sized decision that is doable and not overwhelming.
Cons: Having to make that decision every day, perhaps many times a day.

• Do it one month at a time – Yea! The title of this blog will once again make sense!

Pros: Not having to make a decision for another month.
Cons: Having to go through this hand-wringing shit again in 30 days.

• Make an arbitrary compromise – I will drink only on holidays. I will drink only once a month. I will only have 2-3 drinks each time I drink.

Pros: The ability to drink while still feeling like I have made a healthy decision.
Cons: The nagging feeling that I’ve copped out.

• Drink tonight – Fuck restraint. Woohoo!

Pros: Sweet intoxication, a feeling of belonging
Cons: Guilt and the possibility of an unproductive life with a tendency to downward spiraling and wreckage.

• Don’t decide – If I don’t commit, I can’t fail!

Pros: It is really easy.
Cons: Beer might decide for me.

When a decision is not a decision.

As I lay out the possibilities, I am reminded of a flash of insight that I had one day about decisions. Making a decision isn’t like making an incision. Unless it is a present moment type decision, like, “I am going to jump off this diving board,” or “I will have pepperoni with that,” you don’t just decide and forget about it – you keep making that decision until it is done. Each decision that doesn’t result in an immediate action, requires other decisions. Your earlier self is the one who said, “I am going to stop drinking for 30 days,” but the you that lives right now must decide whether it is going to honor the decision of the earlier you. That is a decision in itself. So, for every big decision there is the follow-up decision: “Do I honor my previous decision or not?” If you make a decision about your lifestyle, you have to decide again and again to follow through and make it happen.

So, even though I was prepared to choose none of the above, I am going to bite the bullet. My decision is…(Drumroll please)

I’m not going to drink today, and I am going to try and make that same decision every day.

Great.

I feel better.

What now? (rimshot)

Riding habits like a king, imagination reigns.

Every grown-up man consists wholly of habits, although he is often unaware of it and even denies having any habits at all.  ~Georges Gurdjieff

I’ve been thinking a lot about habits the past three days and I think I’ve come up with a great way to look at them…

We are not merely creatures of habit, we are also riding our creatures of habit bareback, fingers wrapped in their hairy manes, holding on for dear life. We are both jungle and wild thing, kings and beasts.

Culture, genes, instinct, and chance wire our brains to trigger behaviors that we repeat. We need habits to survive and function in society. Take food. We are born with the habit of suckling, we learn the habit of eating, then get used to making food for ourselves, then buying food for ourselves…If we are conscious about our health, we learn to make shopping lists and buy healthy food. If we aren’t, we get into the habit of buying Big Macs.

The difference between a good and bad habit can sometimes be slim, but when you tame the wild ones by “staring into their yellow eyes without blinking once” like Max in Where the Wild Things Are you climb onto the back of the habit creature and regain control. Of course, staring into those yellow eyes is scary. And while your trying to tame one habit, another one is gnashing its terrible teeth and rolling its terrible eyes, holding back its terrible roars so it can jump you and kick your ass.

Here is one great way to not blink when trying to tame a habit:

• Don’t do it. Don’t try to get rid of an old habit. Create a new one. We aren’t going to dismantle any neural pathways, they are built to last. What we can do is create new pathways. For example, this month, I am getting into the habit of not drinking. And the cool thing about creating new habits is that it creates new pathways in the brain. The ability of the brain to grow new pathways is called neuroplasticity and it is yet another example of science catching up to “mystical” or spiritual traditions that have been around for ages. Here is a NY Times article about it.

…brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.

If you are into neuroplasticity, check out this great episode of The Infinite Mind radio program.

Here are 18 other tips on creating good habits from Lifehacker, an amazing and award winning blog. In the past three weeks I think I’ve used at least 10.

Even better, go to Zen Habits, a blog all about creating good habits as a path to happiness. If you only click one link in this blog, I recommend Zen Habits.

Just for fun, here are some of my favorite habits:

• GTD - Getting Things Done is a productivity system that was created by David Allen. It has reached cult status on the internet, so google it. It actually requires a few habits such as: collecting every piece of “stuff” or thing that needs doing/putting/fixing in one place (I use a stack of index cards) and regularly processing and reviewing the list of stuff.
• Pacing while on the phone - What is up with this? Does the radiation in the phone affect the pacing center of my brain.
• Identifying feelings and their causes – When I was using a lot, I could identify when I was happy (high) and when I wasn’t. During the 7 years I wasn’t using, I learned that there are a few feelings, and that when you identify them, you could usually do something about them, even if it was just acknowledging that they were ok to feel. This habit is probably the greatest of all my habits, because it has spurred a lot of self-improvement. If I’m feeling angry at myself, or anxious about something, there is usually an improvement I can make.
• Cigarettes – Sweet, sweet cancer.
• Sweets - Sweet, sweet, sweets.
• Televison – I am mostly into tv series (seria?seri?) that have some sort of mystery to be uncovered. I just watched the first few episodes of Fringe which satisfied the great hole that the X-files left in my life. Another great show that I thought had died with the writer’s strike is Life.
• NPR – Or any informative radio. I love John Lydon’s Open Source Radio. This American Life, of course.
  Music – I tend to put on music all the time, sometimes in the middle of a conversation. I also collect music like a fiend. Right now I have about 230 Gigs of music.
• StumbleUpon – This is a button that you install on your browser that produces magic. If you don’t know about StumbleUpon, please do yourself and your freetime a favor, and forget that I mentioned it. Or read my post about how I turned Stumbling into a productive habit.

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.  ~Mark Twain