The Thirty Days To A More Powerful Self-Image as a writer (or whatever you want to be/do) leads to an inevitable question: now what? Part 2, 100 things you want to be, do and have …

Why do you want to be a writer? And, most importantly, what do you want to get as a writer?

The first thing is to establish exactly what it is.

A simple process that I wrote about yesterday (from Write For Your Life ) is to take a clean sheet of paper and write what you want to achieve in the next five years, one year and 30 days. Keep it simple, just five things per timeline.

be unrealistic

Block advises writing the most realistic (albeit stretching) goals you have, e.g. things you want to pursue in your quest to be a writer. He also gives another process, this time with no need to be realistic: writing three what I would call Bucket Lists :

• 100 things I would like to have (let’s say a Ferrari..)
• Plus 100 things I would like to do (a year-long-round-the-word-trip for example) and
• 100 things I would like to be (famous?)

These unrealistic no limit lists are a way to write in the subconscious mind what we want, with no real pressure and therefore no resistance (very Law of Attraction…). However, there is another process that I like that mixes up the two: dreamlining from the 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss.  This is one book that I keep on going back to repeatedly for inspiration in my portfolio career quest.

This, however, advocates that the goals need to be unrealistic to be effective, following the principle that doing the unrealistic is easier than doing the realistic. Larger goals give an adrenaline infusion that provides endurance, whilst smaller, more achievable goals are uninspiring.

Same lists of having, doing, and being broken then down into three small steps. The first step starting from NOW. The objective of this is to ‘define the end goal and the required vehicle to achieve them and build momentum with the first critical steps’.

Whichever process you choose, choose one and then remember the words the late Reverend Ike had to say on this subject:

‘You can go to the ocean with a teaspoon or a bucket. The ocean doesn’t care’.

Wiser words were never spoken ;-).