Reachable dreams. Step-by-step

What was your plan for 2020? Become richer, healthier, smarter, or maybe find love?

NB! Each of us in a different situation and has different abilities/opportunities, it is just my experiment of 2020 and I hope that you can find it useful✌

Today’s story is structured in the following way:

  • The trigger that pushed me to pursue a dream (not a fantasy)
  • What’s the difference between a dream and a fantasy
  • How I broke down dreams into a subset of goals
  • Example of my typical day
  • Results

🔫1. Trigger

There is always a trigger before each big change.

In my case, it was about my successful friends and my curiosity:
‘How you …? What are you doing to be…?’

and

Health problem:

  • Neck pain after intense swimming training
  • Stomach problem after eating a junky meal
  • Skin problem
  • Frequent flu/cold during 2019

✨2. Fantasy vs Dream?

What is the difference between a Fantasy and a Dream?

A dream can be broken down into goals and exact things to do daily, a fantasy — can not.

🪓3. Dream into a subset of goals

At the start of 2020 I broke down my big dream of being successful and happy into a subset of goals, and put them in the following groups:

Health, Family & Friends, Career & Finance, Personal development.

  • Be healthy overall
  • Be more energetic
  • Look fit
  • Half-marathon
  • Find a girlfriend
  • Find new friends
  • Keep in touch with my family and friends
  • Have income from my company (investment, consultancy, company profit)
  • Become a better CTO (understand more about tech/people)
  • Understand technology such as Kubernetes, CI/CD, Machine Learning, and Security
  • Build a personal brand: -website , -podcast, -blog, -style
  • Read 12–15 books: 20% novels, 40% -IT books, 40% — business literature
  • Increase my professional network
  • Improve my Swedish

🔍4. Break down Goals into Daily routines

Here I have to recommend two books that can really help you:

— 📗The Slight edge:
This book explains how to break down big things into small daily tasks

— 📕The Power of Habit:
This book helps understand how to build habits for daily tasks

Let me give an example:

You want to be a better in businessman/businesswoman-> Try read 12 business books next year -> 1 book per month -> each book is ~ 300 pages -> ~10 pages per day.

The example shows that your real goal is just to build a habit to read 10 pages per day in case you want to be a better businessman/businesswoman

🤏5. Daily routine example

NB! Times can vary depending on many factors (summer/winter time, illness, night party and so on), but that was my daily schedule during 2020 that I tried to stick to it as much as possible.

7 a.m.

Wake up.

  • I know my agenda for the day (that has been planned one day before), it helps to not snooze too much (Especially with remote work during Corona times)
  • Google Assistant (smart speaker) plays music right after alarm ringing

7 a.m.— 8 a.m.

Morning routine.

  • 20 minutes Duolingo to learn Swedish (🥇Personal development)
  • 10 minutes of yoga (📺Sun Salutation), and 10–20 push-ups (💊Health)
  • 30 minutes for shower and light breakfast, a mix of fast and slow carbs (something sweet and porridge) (💊Health)

8 a.m.— 8.30 a.m.

Day planning.

  • Checking the agenda, add new tasks from emails and Trello sprint backlog(💰Career & Finance /🥇Personal development)
  • Prioritizing tasks that will affect the annual goal in general (💰Career & Finance /🥇Personal development)

8.30 a.m. —7–9 p.m.

Working time

  • Commute to the office (pre-corona time) by bike or bus with audiobook or youtube(💊Health/🥇Personal development)
  • Coding or doing other related tasks with a lunch break(💰Career & Finance/ 👬Friends /🥇Personal Development)
  • Each hour I have a watch beep signal that reminds me to do stretching for a couple of minutes and keep the right posture(💊Health)
  • 1–2 times a week I am running during this time (choosing the day with better weather) (💊Health). I also use Garmin Watch with an in-build 📺running program

12 p.m. — 1 p.m.

Lunchtime.

  • Trying to cook or order something that follows the Harvard Plate suggestion(💊Health)
Harvard Plate
  • Eat vitamins : D, B, Omega 3, and Multivitamins. Especially D in the Scandinavian region (💊Health)
  • Serve or order a small portion (💊Health)

7–9 p.m.— 11 p.m.

Chill and personal time.

  • Watching youtube, or doing any other non-goal related things 🤘
    This is a crucial thing to not become a 🤖robot.
  • If have a special dinner or a party, sometimes I chose an alcohol-free beer instead of regular ( 💊Health). A friend showed me this trick an interesting way to hack your old habits
  • Prepare for bedtime ( 💊Health)
  • No TV-series after 11 PM

11 p.m. — 7 a.m.

  • Be in bed before 11 PM
  • Keep room cold and fresh
  • Keep the room dark and silent during the night
  • Sleep at least 8 hours
  • Do not eat 2 hours before sleep
  • Do not drink alcohol before going to bed
  • Do not drink coffee after 3 p.m
  • Sleep on a comfortable mattress and pillow
  • Remove blue light from your screen 2 hours before bed (📖 Bedtime mode on Android)
  • Go to bed and wake up at the same time (23:00–7:00), even on the weekend

🧾5. Results

  • Duolingo (Finished the whole course)
  • Built a website: https://skob.io/
  • Did 7 podcast episodes (it didn’t take off, but it was a good experience) + one episode with me
  • Wrote 3 articles on medium (include this one) ~ 4700 views
Stats from dev.to
  • Workwise, we rolled out the: https://sensivo.eu/ product, have several paying customers, and are closing the pre-seed round🎉🍾🥂
  • I guess vitamins helped me to avoid the flu, and now I am recovering after COVID-19
  • I found new friends and acquaintances via volleyball meetups and participation in an open-source project. And I have been in touch with old friends and family via Zoom
  • I got rid of stomach pain by increasing physical activities. Still have skin problem but found a good treatment after proper check-ups
  • And I found a girlfriend (How — it is a different big story)🎈

That was just an experiment of 2020, hope it was a fun read.

UPDATE from 2021!
Recently, I build an app YourHabit.me that helps me to track my progress during my 2021 experiment!

I appreciate your claps and please leave your comments below.

If you have a friend who is chasing a dream but without obvious progress please consider sharing this post with him/her 👌

Stay safe and happy new year!
Best, Alex
Co-founder of
sensivo.eu

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I am writing about my entrepreneurial journey as a full-stack developer and co-founder at Sensivo.eu. https://skob.io/

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Aleksandr Skobeltcyn

I am writing about my entrepreneurial journey as a full-stack developer and co-founder at Sensivo.eu. https://skob.io/