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