Seven Steps to Turn Your Impossible Dream Into Digestible Chunks of Daily Success
The power of incremental progress for (content) creators
The problem with dreams is their size.
Nobody loves to dream small and honestly, you shouldn’t. Dreams are here to lift you up from your ordinary life.
Dreams are your destiny calling. They’re not made to keep you where you are. To make you feel invalid, invisible, and mediocre.
These are material and personal dreams for (content) creators;
- Making 5-6 figures with your passion
- Finally actually creating that long-awaited novel or Ebook or Ecourse
- Feeling confident to call yourself an authority with facts backing you up
- Having X amount of followers. You can skip this one from the list
- Seeing your quality improve on the go and getting feedback confirmation
- Not losing inspiration when Stats and Reads and Money drops to close to zero. And not wasting your writing time complaining about it.
- My niche or topic is growing into this great mirror that reflects my personal growth.
- You can continue this list with your personal dreams
How to bridge the gap? What to do when you can’t get there from here?
The magic is making one small step at a time, every freaking day. This is called the Power of Incremental Progress.
Make daily progress and your life will change. Do it long and consistently enough, and suddenly you’ll find yourself standing on the top of the hill of your dream, looking back in the valley thinking: How did I get here?
I am applying these 7 hard truths of incremental progress for years now. That’s exactly how I wrote a novel, created 2 Ebooks, 500 blogs and currently making the jump for my first Ecourse.
I’m 3 years in the game of being a content creator, but applying these 7steps gave me enough confidence, result and self-growth, that I love to share this content with you.
It's not a secret cult. I’m convinced anybody can do this.
These are the steps.
1. Make Small Tweaks In Your Routine
The first step is a warm-up. It doesn’t have to do anything with your craft.
Write down a list of things you are going to adapt and change in your daily routine for the next week. This is not about having a clear vision of what your dream is. Even when you have that vision, start with this weekly exercise.
You wake up at 6 AM instead of after 09 AM. Instead of coffee, you make a smoothie in the morning. Instead of public transport, you take a bike to work.
The core idea about tweaking routine is that you don’t need to make a massive leap into the unknown. With this weekly warm-up, you train your brain for small changes. They should be challenging though.
Everything you change should be consistent for a week.
Evaluate on day 7. Decide what you’ll like to keep as changes, what gives you energy, makes you come more alive, and what didn’t work.
2. Learn Something New
The second step is to learn something new every day for the first week. This is aside from doing new things. Let the learning be connected to the content you create, your craft, your niche. The process you’re in as creator.
When you just started to make podcasts, learn more about using your voice or even technical aspects around recording. When you write content, learn how to write appealing paragraphs.
When you’re just starting with, let’s say playing the guitar, buy the instrument, and here is where you start, 30 minutes a day.
You pick one thing that will challenge your brain, that includes learning something new connected to your content creation, and that you know you will stick to for at least a week.
3. Accumulate Your Small Changes and celebrate them
“Every time you try something new, and allow yourself to be open to whatever experience arises, you are learning, and expanding your repertoire of life skills and self-knowledge. As you do this you also expand the size of your comfort zone.” — Abigail Brenner M.D.
After 2 weeks, make a mental note of your progress. Salute yourself for it. Add all your challenges and points to your list; they will be a unique collection of small things.
Don’t start like Michael Jordan. Take it easy.
In this first week, the most important thing is to do them daily and see them grow. Realize that there will be a maximum of new things you can do and learn in a week.
You are planting the seeds of change. Water your transformation with showing up daily.
4. Set your goal in time
This step is about setting a manageable goal regarding your content creation, like a 30-day posting one-blog-a-day or video challenge. Or writing an Ebook or Course in a week.
The former 3 steps have trained your showing-up-muscle and your focus on the small steps. Also, it supplied you with additional knowledge in your field. Use this same muscle for this step.
We did steps 1,2,3 to avoid you having a cold start when the real work starts. Your brain cells are already used to the rhythm, the expansion, and they’ll probably cry for more.
Sometimes having a big end-goal takes away your ability to focus on the next step. It freezes you in procrastination because the weight of your dream is on your shoulders. Each small step seems ridiculous in the light of your ambition.
A lot of tiny steps will get you to China. And back.
There’s magic in showing up almost religiously to your small task every day in full devotion.
Writing for three months daily on this platform brought me my viral piece. I didn’t focus on writing a viral article. I focused on writing every day, like a religious extremist.
“Incremental daily progress is what actually causes transformation… Showing up, every single day…organizing for the long haul” — Seth Godin
5. Find and keep your flow and joy
Creation is about flow and joy. It’s the secret source where great inspirational work arises.
Don’t be that narcissist copy-cat Tik-Tok addict.
Authenticity is the new influencers model. It has this special glow that no Instagram filter can fake.
A voice might try to hijack your enjoyment and daily progress by telling you you’ll never be a great successful artist and money machine. That’s old conditioning and besides the point.
Sometimes you need to shut your mind.
Sometimes all we need to do in life is follow the breadcrumbs of joy. The magic of incremental progress is about finding joy by bringing newness in your life and sharpening your kick-ass skills by showing up daily.
Joy leads to flow leads to passion leads to purpose.
6. Don’t let habits shut you down
When you’re past your first week, you most likely are going to make it to the finish line. Even when that’s 3 months from now.
The trick is to get healthy addicted to the magic the incremental progress gives you.
I experienced this healthy addiction the strongest with stepping into an ice-cold swimming pool for a month in winter in Ibiza last year doing the Wim Hof Method. And yeah, I just started again last week. I love it.
People that don’t have the stamina or determination stop already on day 3. Their habit patterns are so strong that they don’t allow for new experiences.
Your known past creates a predictable future — Dr. Joe Dispenza
Turn your predictable future in your favour by breaking with the past.
Be aware when an old habit pattern tries to grab you into doing things you are doing for the past 100 years. Addictions can be strong, and habit patterns are no exception.
Life is short. Learn something new. Expand beyond your habit patterns.
7. Let your followers, readers and bank account decide your success— not your mind
Your mind is good at tricking you.
It can tell you you’re a great blogger that deserves success after 20 blogs. It can tell you you don’t even get out of bed to become the next Tim Denning.
Let tangible proof decide whether you made it to the top of your mountain. Since you’re so focused on your daily chunks of success, you might not even notice when that day has come you reached your goal.
Guess what, it might not be all that important after all. You’re probably already dreaming of a new mountain top at the horizon.
Celebrate it just the same. But let the real world out there be your proof. Tim Denning says repeatedly you need 5 years to rule the internet. That makes me warm up, but not even close.
But I don’t care, I’m waiting for the next small success. The next chapter of my new Ecourse on DeFi finished. Yesterday somebody subscribed to my Substack. It's $7 a month. I celebrated it like a touchdown in the Super Bowl.
And so should you.
Takeaway
One of my personal biggest life lessons came from finishing my debut novel. I looked up for 30 years to this dream, paralyzed by its magnitude. One day I broke it down to hundreds of pieces, fixing one chunk a day and mounting the bits together to a tangible result.
Suddenly, one grey February morning, I held my freshly printed novel in my hands.
The bigger your dreams, the wider the gap to what you’re actually doing in your daily life, and the bigger your frustration.
These seven steps avoid letting the weight of your big dream or goal freeze you into procrastination. This method can be applied to anything you wish to achieve in life, not only your content creation.
The world out there will be the witness of you achieving your goal. You will know when you’re there. Don’t brag about anything until you made that touchdown.
Yesterday I saw a great Medium handle. It said;
Gone Writing.
That’s the spirit.
Check out my Ecourse on DeFi that I created using the incremental process. it took me 4 years of Crypto expience to build. Grab my free weekly medicine on Substack too.
