Dreams, goals, and steps

How to make your dreams come true in 15 minutes a day

Sep 18, 2022

(By Andrew Newiss in Sunderland UK)

I just got home from 3 weeks of traveling all over the UK and Europe on tour with Brandy Clark.

It was a jam-packed tour of England, Scotland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and Oslo, (plus a quick stop in France for baguettes on the way to Amsterdam), and we had a truly fantastic time.

This was my first proper overseas tour since Covid started, and I was truly overwhelmed with gratitude to be back out on the road, playing music with people I love, and getting to share it with the most wonderfully attentive and receptive crowds.

I believe the only way to understand the nuance in your own culture with any depth is to leave it and visit another, and I’m profoundly appreciative of this music life that lets me travel the world and experience different people, places, food, and culture.

Now that I’m home, I’ve been thinking about what I want to do over the next few months and formulating a plan for how I’ll use my time each day to nudge a little closer to reaching my goals.

The pondering got me thinking about how to articulate the difference between dreams and goals clearly, and the most effective way to create step-by-step plans to reach them (spoiler, I came up with a graph because… nerd).

Let’s dive in!

The key difference between dreams, goals, and steps is how easily measurable and quickly achievable they are.

You determine this by asking, how obvious is it when you’ve nailed it and how long will it take to do so.

Aforementioned nerd graph:

A dream is something big and bombastic, like “become an international performing artist” or “be the most in-demand keys player in the world”. It becomes your North Star and sets the course for your career and all the decisions you make. It acts like a carrot on a stick and it’s very tough to mark the specific moment in time when you’ve reached it.

A goal (or many goals) makes up the big stepping stones that lead you from where you are now to achieving your dream. They could be “perform in a new country” or “get a gig in a professional touring band”. They are easier to achieve than dreams, and more easily measurable, but still too vague to be used as your daily plan.

Steps are the small, very easily measurable, achievable actions that help you reach your goals and make those big dreams eventually come true. If your goal is to perform in a new country, the steps could be: research venues, make a list of contacts, reach out to potential venues, confirm the show date, and book travel.

I like to think of it as a giant dream cookie you just keep breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces, from dreams to goals to steps, until you’re left with something that feels totally achievable and not at all intimidating. A bite-size task you can nail in 15 minutes.

An example:

Cassie Roma and I came together just over a year ago and quickly discovered we had the same desire: to empower and inspire women in creative business - that’s the dream.

Since we started working together we’ve brewed up a few good ideas for how to do this, including creating a podcast - this is the goal.

Here are the steps we’re going to be taking to reach that goal:

• Write a list of 10 potential guests

• Brainstorm themes

• Test equipment

• Choose podcasting software

• Contact the first guest

• Schedule the first session

• Choose intro music

There are seven small tasks and if both Cassie and I spend 15 minutes a day for a week on this we’ll be ready to roll.

Working on one step for 15 minutes a day, we’ll be ready to record the first episode, reaching our goal of creating a podcast, and getting us closer to achieving our joint dream of empowering and inspiring women in creative business.

Creatives are fantastic at coming up with big, beautiful, awe-inspiring dreams, but we’re also really great at sinking into pits of despair at the overwhelm of how to get anywhere near achieving those dreams.

When you sit down at your desk in the morning, thinking to yourself “ok today I’m going to empower and inspire women in creative business” is far more overwhelming than if you say “today I’m going to write a list of 10 people I’d like to interview”. Just like saying “today I will become an international performing artist” is absurdly impossible compared to “today I will research 5 similar artists in Australia I could potentially co-bill with”.

Aside from making it more manageable, breaking down your dreams and goals into bite-sized steps means you’re far more likely to show up to do the work every day because the positive reinforcement of actually achieving something tangible each time you work will keep you feeling encouraged.

Starting with just 15 minutes a day builds consistency, and discipline, and strengthens your work ethic. You’ll achieve much more in the long term by doing 15 minutes every day than by staying up working like a demon until 5 am one night fueled by chocolate-covered coffee beans and mountain dew (honestly, how gross does that combo sound?), and then feeling burnt out for the next 2 weeks.

We’re playing the long game here, friends, and consistently spending 15 minutes a day is all you need to make those dreams come true.