Dreamlining - An Enlightening Exercise

Note: There will be no pumpkin bios in this post. I promise.

"What would you do if there were no way you could fail? If you were 10 times smarter than the rest of the world?"
- Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek

A combination of dreaming and goal-setting, Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, suggests dreamlining to shed light on what we want to accomplish in life - more specifically, what we want to accomplish in the next 6-12 months. "Dreamlining will be fun, and it will be hard. The harder it is, the more you need it", he writes. It's dreaming big with a timeline.

I took the bait and gave it a shot. Following his lead with the opening question in mind, I completed the following statements listing up to five items each:

• In 6 months I dream of having ...
• In 6 months I dream of being ...
• In 6 months I dream of doing ...

Then I repeated the exercise using 12 months instead of 6.

The first of six dreamlining steps listed in the book, I found this seemingly simple exercise enlightening. For some reason I had trouble finding items I wanted to have, but no trouble listing all the things I wanted to do. And some things came up I didn't even know I wanted!

Although I like the idea of holistic dreamlining, this tool is very practical and could probably be narrowed down in scope and used in any specific facet of life: day job, creative dreams, marriage, family, health, etc. I might experiment and see what happens.

Why don't you give it a shot too?