Dreams Over Goals in 2024

More dreams, less goals, and some commitments for the year

Maxfield Parrish - Dream Castle in the Sky, 1908

When I wrote 23 Highlights for 2023, I had a draft written called Looking Ahead to 2024. But when I went to edit that, it felt incomplete and boring. So I rewrote it. But that draft also felt incomplete and boring. This repeated for about fifteen drafts. 

The sixteenth draft was 3,000 words and I realized the problem was that I was trying to put form on something formless. Here’s the thing: in 2024, I’m not going to try to do new stuff. I’m going to take a structured approach to doing a lot less stuff, so I can make room for my best ideas ever, which I haven’t even thought of yet.

How will I do that, you ask? Well, I already started toward the end of last year, and it looks like this:

I have quit setting goals. 

When I was a boy, I was a dreamer. I loved that about myself. People loved that about me. Up until when I was in my late twenties, people told me my big vision and enthusiasm were contagious, and that they could get excited about stuff just watching me get excited about it.

But at some point, I traded dreams for goals. And I’m not sure I gained that much from the trade. My goals have grown smaller, more frequent, and more about optimizing my lifestyle. Setting goals has become something pathological I do to gain some sense of control over my life. 

I no longer set goals so that now I can make space for dreams more authentic, ambitious, and unbelievable than I can even conceive of now. I still have priorities and track progress, but it is all stuff that I’m already doing or committed to. 

If anything, I am overcommitted, which is why I’ve developed a philosophy of how to allocate effort:

Crush the important stuff, quit the rest, or make it easy. 

One day in early November, I felt overwhelmed. I wanted to see what was on my plate so I gathered all my planners, calendars, and to-do lists and wrote up all my different obligations and activities in one place to give me a better idea of exactly how much I was actually doing. I wanted to answer two questions: 

1. What are all my current responsibilities?

2. What are the things I have said I would do?

The finished document was seven pages long, over 3,200 words. My first reaction was shock. I questioned my sanity a bit.

I had not done a good job of either saying no or prioritizing. That was when I decided I had to stop setting goals. But I also had to ask myself what’s important. So I started prioritizing some of the things most important to me right away:

I am teaching my daughter to read. 

Look, she’s only two years old. I’m not totally convinced it’s realistic to teach a two-year-old to read, but that hasn’t stopped me from buying books on the subject and reading with her whenever I can, making animated faces and talking to her about books. If I don’t accomplish anything else this year, then spending hundreds of hours introducing her to one of my great loves, reading, won’t have been a waste. 

I am preparing for and recovering from double-jaw surgery (which includes weight loss). 

Since before Thanksgiving, I’ve been steadily losing weight and am currently at the leanest and healthiest I’ve been in ten years. In the summer I have a double-jaw surgery scheduled that will change how I look, breathe, and sound. Preparing mentally, physically, and logistically is a huge priority for me (and my family). And the discipline and energy that have come as externalities of this process have been great.

I am writing my newsletter and first solo book(s). 

Writing Castles in the Sky has been a blast for the last two years. After a deep dive into my work, I am clearer than ever on what I want to do. At some point soon, I’m giving the Substack a big facelift and releasing some new projects. You will know it when you see it. Plus I’m working on two books: one I hope to release in the first half of the year, and one in the second. 

I am investing in a few boring, rock-solid routines. 

The first is daily meditation. I downloaded the Waking Up app by Sam Harris which I’ve used before and enjoyed.

The second routine is around sleeping well and preparing for the day. In the past, I’ve tried and failed to get a really good morning routine down. Lately, I’ve realized that it’s my bedtime routine that needs work. If I can prepare my stuff for the morning and get to bed by a certain time, plus charge my phone in a certain place, the morning takes care of itself. 

Finally, I have a scheduled meal planning and meal prepping session. I have tried with mixed success to do this before, but since moving it to a different day of the week, I’ve been seeing great results. This only accounts for about three-fifths of my meals, but not having to worry on those days is huge.

There’s a lot of stuff I’m not going to do this year. 

Every year I agonize over stuff I should be doing. I waste so much time researching projects I will never do. This year I’m just saying no. I am not going to join group fitness classes or learn to code or start a vegetable garden or do any of the other dozens of quasi-interesting hobbies I feel compelled to do but don’t really want to do (or else I would have done them already, you know?). I’m just not going to do them this year. No. Nyet. Bu. Nein.

I’m going to fail fast, pivot often, and ask for help. 

Two big wins came on the backs of failures in 2023 My weight loss win came on the back of a big weight loss failure. When I couldn’t lose weight myself over five months, I hired a nutritionist and talked to a doctor. I am also having a productivity win since I failed after two years of trying to put together a note-taking system/productivity stack/second brain/life operating system and just returned to my old reliable Google Calendar, Workflowy to-do list, Evernote notes, and paper planner. 

I realized there are a lot of places in my life where I think I’m being “strategic” but in reality, I’m scared and outsmarting myself with rationalizations. So I’ve started asking myself, “how could I fail at this?” And I just run straight in that direction. It’s been really helpful because I rarely fail but sometimes I do fail and realize I need to pivot or ask for help. The number of breakthroughs on big and little things (like weight loss or to-do lists) in the last month and a half have been huge. 

Did I say I’m making it easy? 

I heard this from Tim Ferriss a long time ago. He asks himself, “what would this look like if it were easy?” Even though I’m not setting any goals, honoring all my commitments and rushing headlong toward failure whenever I can means I’m working hard. So like I said, whenever something isn’t an important commitment, I try to make it easy (or fun).

I cannot tell you how much time and work this has saved me. Particularly if you are a perfectionist (which I didn’t think I was but this thought exercise is making me realize I might be), this question has fundamentally altered my relationship with several projects and tasks at my job, Substack, house, and business. 

The biggest, best changes in my life were preceded by quiet periods of reflection and intense work.

I’ve always wanted to be a “big pronouncements” guy or a “call his shots” kind of guy. Honestly, I think it fits my personality better.

But the biggest, best changes in my life were always preceded by quiet periods of reflection and intense work. As my Dad advised me before one such period in my early twenties, “you just kind of put your head down and put one foot in front of the other.” And that’s where I’m at this year.

In 2024, I am going super-saiyan. I am going to explode into a Supernova. I am going to realize all my potential and become a bestselling author, YouTube sensation, millionaire triathlete gangster astronaut cowboy. 

Or, I may grow in another direction, and decide that this is the year I cultivate a stronger sense of worth away from my ambitions, and decide a small, intimate audience with a quiet life and a close family is more valuable than any of that–and more what I want. 

Or, I may land somewhere in between. To be honest, I don’t know what will happen this year.

What I do know, is that I feel something special. Around Halloween, I started to feel something in the air, like I was on the cusp of something exciting, something aspirational, something that would be satisfying in completely new ways. I feel now that my main job for the year is to prepare myself to recognize and receive it. 

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What are your plans for 2024?