Planners Live The Dream

[Music]

my whole life

i’ve been a big dreamer you see when i

was

a kid i actually wanted to make it into

the nba

now i know what you guys are thinking

zack

you’re a 5'7 white canadian who can’t

jump

that’s a pretty dumb dream and you know

what

you’re right but we all have some pretty

dumb dreams

what’s even worse as as a kid i had

never considered when i would need to

accomplish the stream by

or even what milestones i would need to

hit along the way

instead i would parade around my high

school and tell everybody about my dream

i wouldn’t even hesitate to use it as an

excuse for my poor grades

or for not doing my homework

but there’s some unfortunate news for

all of us here today

we’re all probably going to die without

accomplishing our life’s biggest dreams

now that’s not me being a dick because

i’m not in the mba

it’s actually statistics in a 2008 study

that interviewed hundreds of people on

their deathbed

the most common thread found was that a

majority of the subjects

had not even honored half of their

life’s deepest dreams

and unfortunately had to die knowing

that they had no one to blame

but themselves so why do we blindly feel

that we

are different well it wasn’t until the

end of high school that i realized i

wasn’t going to make it into the mba

but luckily i had learned from my

mistakes and pursued that dream and knew

that i would approach my next ones much

more carefully in fact i decided i

wasn’t going to dream anymore

instead i made the conscious decision

that i was going to become a planner

i was going to plan and execute and

that’s when everything changed

over the next few years i obsessively

planned

everything from how to get a job build

the right skills for entrepreneurship

and eventually how i would leave canada

move to los angeles and start my own

company

i now work with and manage some of the

biggest and most impactful creators in

the world

part of my work with these creators is

to actually add structure

to their big dreams helping provide a

roadmap to something that might

otherwise seem impossible

from helping yes theory bungie jump out

of the helicopter with will smith

to helping airac go from zero to one

million youtube subscribers in just a

calendar year

or to helping the cheeky boyo surpass

one billion

views on tick tock all of these dreams

started with a plan and i’ll tell you

guys the same thing that i tell all of

them

screw your dreams the world has too many

of them

they’re over glorified and serve

humanity no good

we need more doers those who are

executing a plan

because while you’re dreaming about it

someone is out there planning for it and

executing on it

back in high school i had never even

actually taken the time to consider the

level of training

and commitment that was needed or what

other areas of my life would need to be

sacrificed

in order to even have a shot at making

it to the nba

and that’s how i believe 99 of us here

today interact with our dreams

and thus why we only end up realizing

when it’s far too late that we have not

even attempted

to accomplish the things that we say we

want most in life

in fact i would argue that most of us in

this room here today

would actually change our dreams if we

just took the time

to sit with the consequences that would

develop if we were to take these dreams

and turn them into plans you see because

dreaming by itself is not enough

we live in a society that makes it cool

to dream it encourages us to think big

but it fails to emphasize what comes

after

now on the other hand it makes us think

that planning is boring

and that planners are people that lack

creativity

and planners lack spontaneity well i’m

here to tell you today that that is far

from true

and here are a few reasons why first off

planners set due dates due dates allow

us to reverse engineer and build a plan

we humans are genetically predisposed to

leave things

until the very last minute we know this

to be true when it comes to projects and

assignments

but we rarely consider the similarities

when it comes to dreams

we believe that life is long and that

there’ll be plenty of opportunities in

the future

where we have nothing better to do but

take action on our dreams

this is just not the case if you’re not

actively spending your life

working towards your biggest dreams then

you’re probably just moving through life

attending to your most surface level

wants or even worse

the needs of others when i wanted to

move to los angeles i didn’t just say

that it would happen one day

i actually made myself a due date i

promised myself

that i would move before my 25th

birthday i told myself that if i didn’t

i would book a flight from toronto

canada to los angeles and move without

any

plans scary right

but the pressure was on but in fact it

almost became

easier to put the other pieces into

place

now that i knew what limited time

constraint i was working with

once planners have a due date they then

tell a friend

they designate this friend as their

accountability partner

they make sure that this is someone who

is trusted and has their best intentions

in mind

but they only tell one friend

do me a favor if you’re in this room and

you have a dream

don’t tell your teachers don’t tell your

parents

don’t post it on social media and please

please please

do not put your dream in your instagram

bio

you see when we put our dreams on

display for the world

we often receive premature praise for

them this

actually gives us a rush of dopamine

that makes us less likely to follow

through and do the work

associated to accomplishing this dream

when i was in high school it was part of

my identity that i was going to make the

nba

and that was a mistake it was such a

part of my core

that i had actually neglected to do the

work necessary to make up for my obvious

genetic shortcomings

today as a planner i hate telling people

my dreams

i recognize that everybody will just

find out about them when they actually

come true

anything before that is really just for

my ego

don’t tell people your dreams just show

them

now i’ve often heard people call

planners

realists which i guess by definition

makes dreamers idealists

now i think this is most true when it

comes to forecasting problems

it should be no surprise to everyone

here today that accomplishing your

dreams is going to be hard

like really hard planners are not naive

about what it’s going to take

things go wrong happens and we have

to adjust

in order to be successful if we’re not

prepared for hurdles along the way

then we’re just going to get discouraged

at the first sight of an unforeseen

issue

planners will actually take the time to

write a list of all the foreseeable

problems that they might face along the

way

then they’ll make another list of all

the potential solutions

that they would use if they were to face

these problems down the line

as they become more experienced and

develop closer to their dreams

this list of problems will grow and

that’s actually what they want

you see because it is awareness that is

the key

to progress we have to be willing to

know

what problems we’re going to face down

the line and our plan

needs to take into account our unique

strengths as well as our unique

weaknesses

for dealing with these problems we have

to be willing to compensate for our

weaknesses

as well as always look for opportunities

to use our strengths to our advantage

wherever possible

so yeah i guess i didn’t accomplish my

childhood dream of making it to the nba

but to be honest with you all i far

prefer my life as a planner

i know that we believe that dreamers are

the happiest and have life the best

but from my experience it’s actually the

planners who end up getting what they

want out of life

ironically it’s the planners who live

the dream

because most dreams are left

unaccomplished because we do not develop

a game plan for achieving them

it is not a lack of effort or desire

that leaves these dreams unattained

but simply our inability to develop the

game plan in the first place

thus dreams are just unverified goals

so why wait if you’re here tonight and

you have a big dream lingering in your

mind

pull out your phone and text your best

friend tell them what that dream

is and ask them to just hold you

accountable

to building your first list of

foreseeable problems

before april 1st don’t just talk about

it

be about it thank you