Dream ⇆ Design (Just Enough) ⇆ Do

MTYL Memo #1—for those creating more freedom, purpose & possibility.

For years, I’ve wanted to help more dreamers become doers. I thought the problem for me and other dreamers who hadn’t built our dreams yet was in the doing.

But then I started to see that “design” was missing from that flow, and revised it to dream → design → do. There really are basic levels of planning and organization of time, money, possessions, and priorities that help a dreamer become a doer.

Are you with me? Cool.

I continue to stand by this, but I’ve realized over my years of building and creating that “designing” is where many dreamers (myself certainly included) can get or stay stuck. It’s where we do draining things like:

• Try to get all our branding “right”

• Try to guess what people want, and how they want it

• Try to get confident/skinny/assertive/articulate/pretty enough to take action

• Dial in all our systems and processes

• Wait for the next bonus so we can get some financial breathing room or so we can take the course we think we need

What a party. But the kind I’m done attending. What I’m finally learning is that what we actually need is to design just enough to take action.

It’s a conversation, y’all

This whole process of building our dreams is more like an ongoing conversation between our dreaming, designing, and doing parts. With tons of bumps and bruises and thrills along the way.

And this conversation is way easier to have when you simplify.

In fact, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from these past couple years of post-corporate travel, exploration, and business building/unbuilding/rebuilding, it’s this: You need to simplify work, life, and money in order to complicate your life in all the interesting, fun ways.

But that simplification requires intentional effort, frequent reminders, and a lot of encouragement.

To that end, starting today, I’ll be sending you bite-size “memos”—much shorter than even this one—instead of the, ah, voluminous weekly essays* I’ve been sending. These MTYL Memos will be a daily (M-F) dose of simplifying money, work & life designed to encourage and support all of us as we build our dreams.

They come on weekdays, because if there’s one thing we principled 9-5ers & builders w/ big dreams want, it’s meaningful work, and most of us work on workdays. And I’m really excited to help build this movement of meaningful work for all of us big dreamers. Thanks so much for being here.

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*Paid subscribers will continue to get a personal essay/book sneak peek on the monthly—about solo travel, venturing, interesting people, etc

Hey there! I send MTYL (More to Your Life) Memos every weekday to help all us big dreamers create more freedom, purpose & possibility. Let’s do this.