attention industry — The Problem with Dreams.

The Problem with Dreams.

I’ve heard, and seen, many people justify a series of less than brilliant decisions with the argument that they’re ‘following their dreams’.

First: Grow the hell up.

Second: Chasing a dream isn’t the same as having a plan, or doing what you love. Chasing a dream is completely detaching your objectives from reality, and buying into the myth of north america; the idea that hard work, and dedication, can make anything happen.

It’s a beautiful myth. A necessary one, too. But it’s a myth all the same. Because hard work and dedication are important, but more often than not, it’s the stuff that you can’t really teach or learn, like talent, style, intellect or intuition, that take someone to the highest levels of something.

The important thing to note here, is that everyone needs to work hard and be dedicated to succeed. But the people who aren’t naturally good at something start at a terrible, and often insurmountable disadvantage, when it comes to getting to the top.

Here’s how someone’s career is likely to go, if they follow their ability and passion, rather than a specific dream:

They finish school, and look for a job where they can learn something, and get closer to getting paid to do what they love to do. That job helps them realize two things: that getting paid to do something you love is totally awesome, and that it’s even more fun when you’re good at it. So they begin to specialize, to chase the intersection of what they are interested in, and what they are good at.

If they continue chasing this intersection, they’ll likely ending up working in a bunch of different roles in the same industry, learning a ton, and most importantly, moving in the direction of not just getting better, but also picking what they are better at - as you progress in a field you are passionate about, you can learn what direction suits your natural talents and interests, and challenge yourself to grow in that direction.

[In my personal example, my interest in communication theory and copyright in online spaces took me from PR to design / production work, to internal client-side digital marketing, to digital and social strategy.]

Dreams don’t work like that.

If you have a dream to be a rock star, you work toward that one specific goal. You save up and get a guitar, you learn to play, you start a band, and you do other things to support yourself while you try to make it work. You continue working hard, being dedicated, and chasing your dream.

But you don’t really divert, from a dream. I find it’s rare that people who dedicate their lives to chasing a dream really shift their expectations. You don’t dedicate your life to an end goal, and work toward that end goal for years, only to end up somewhere else and consider it a success.

It comes down to whether you consider your career, and your life, to be about a destination, or a journey.

Journey people admit they don’t know where to end up. Ideally, they chase passion and talent, and see where the best next step there is for them to take will lead them.

Destination people focus more on what and who they WANT to be, than what or who they would be GREAT at being.

Dreams can be motivational, inspirational, and solve a hell of a lot of problems. But they aren’t anything near a plan, or even an optimization of circumstance.