Maybe too obvious, but I liked it.

http://mysuperchargedlife.com/blog/10-techniques-for-effective-problem-solving/print/

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First, prioritize relevant information about yourself – what skills you like to use, what fields of knowledge or experience do you like to explore, what kind of work environment do you thrive in, what kind of people do you like to work with, and where in the world you want to live.

Second, put it all on one piece of paper with a visual element and contemplate the big picture. Do not limit yourself. Imagine your dream job.

Third, if you don’t know what dream job this picture paints, then start showing it to (compassionate) friends and family or asking people what job they think would be a good one for you.

Fourth, once you’ve identified your dream job, interview people who have the job already. Find out how they got the job and how people they know got the job. Ask them to refer you to others. If it seems like the job is out of reach- 1)talk to more people, 2)identify which skills you lack and start building them, or 3)maybe this isn’t your dream job.

Fifth, visit, in person, the places that may have your dream job, whether they are hiring or not. Do research. Dress sharp. Practice asking and answering questions briefly. Prepare a handful of stories about times you were successful at using your signature skills. Ask anyone and everyone if they can put you in touch with someone who has the power to hire you. SEND THANK YOU CARDS. In interviews, talk half the time and listen the other half. Don’t talk for more than 2 minutes. Be prepared for “No’s.” Work the job-hunt like a job. Sleep well, eat well, drink lots of water.

Sixth, keep dreaming. Imagine yourself as a beekeeper, a machinist, a sociologist, a wine-taster.

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.

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)