My good friend and Conjunctured business partner, Dusty Reagan, just wrote a blog post that takes a pretty interesting (and realistic) perspective on productivity and achieving your life’s goals. Below is an excerpt and a link to his full post:

Yes my friends, it’s true. You’re gonna’ die. This is my #1 productivity tip. Don’t forget, that someday, maybe tomorrow, you’re gonna’ die. How does this help productivity? Remember all those things you’ve been planning on doing. You better do them… soon, because you’re gonna’ die. – Dusty Reagan, Life-hacking Productivity Tip #1: You’re gonna’ die

It’s a sobering, yet curiously motivational realization. Read his full blog post, complete with a video from William Shatner.

As life becomes smoother and less rocky, it’s like being in a state of quietness and then being at total peace. It’s an easy place to stay. It’s comfortable.

But you do want more experience, don’t you? If you’re anything like me, then you crave it, you lust for it. We feel the urge inside our hearts for a higher fun level, a higher intellect level, a higher plane of life experience – and yes, it is possible—we know it is. The more experiences we can experience, the higher our level of adventure climbs. We CRAVE adventure and change and the unknown because it is what drives us through life and will drive us even further, even higher.

Do not be afraid to live in a world where you have more options, more choices. Do not be afraid to live in a world without limits. Do not be afraid to live in a world where tomorrow can look very different than today. Accepting this and embracing this is key because, after all, it is the world that you and I are living in, already.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN_4EZMYf-E

If there were no limitations or consequences, what would your perfect average day look like?

I learned an interesting visualization technique after watching a video taped speech from the uber internet marketer, Frank Kern. He shared what worked for him to help him realize his ideal future. His words were so impactful to me, that it encouraged me to do exactly as he did.

The key is every day – you could do this stuff every day and not die or get sick of it. Many people visualize their future in order to help it come true. However, in order to fully realize that future, it’s important that you don’t just visualize the physical things like that fancy car you want to drive, but also how driving it makes you feel, what you’re thinking about as you’re driving it, what music you listen to while you’re driving, who’s in the car with you, etc. The more detailed you can get, the more your mind’s eye can begin to piece it all together and realize how possible it is.

I’ve been visualizing my perfect, average day in great detail, from waking up in the morning to going to bed at night. I’ve been writing it all down in detail on a sketch pad about 36″ x 18″. I never expected to write as much as I have so far. In fact, I’ve been working on it for weeks and am only up to 12:30pm. It’s a very surprisingly difficult process, actually.

Photo 1 – Here’s a photo of me working on it while I was in my backyard on my picnic table. This is after having just started, so I haven’t filled up that much space.

Photo 2 – A close up – it reads, “in the future…a day in the life of davidhwalker, if i had to live this day over and over again, what day would make me happy”:

Photo 3 – I moved inside and wrote quite a bit more. I just kept going and going…was an immense amount of fun, actually! :

Note: what you see at the bottom is the word “SLEEP.” Before I had started, I had assumed that I would be able to do the entire visualize from “AWAKE” to sleep on that one page. In fact, at the point that I’ve finished writing in this photo, I’m only up to 10:30am. Didn’t realize how detailed I was going to get, but the more detailed I got, the more real it became, and the more my mind’s eye was beginning to accurately take a grasp of what my future can be.

Photo 3: This is where I am currently–page 2 (I was able to fill up the entire first page before going to page 2). I’m a bit stuck and find myself writing a new sentence every few days. But at this time I’ve having a hard time visualizing what my perfect, average day will be like after 12:30pm. I know what it will begin to look like around 6pm, but for some reason, I’m having a hard time filling that gap.

Here’s a list of some of the questions that guided me along the way. Remember, the key is don’t think about stuff—think about experience. our experiences help shape our identity.

1. Where would you live?
2. What would your house look like?
3. What time would you wake up?
4. What would I do in the morning? Think about? First words of the day?
5. what would i have for breakfast
6. what does the mundane stuff look like – what you’re thinking about, etc
7. what would you spend the first half of your day doing
8. what would you have for lunch
9. who eat with
10. what would your friends be like
11. what would you do for personal fulfillment
12. what life purpose would i strive for
13. what would your business be
14. what time would you start work
15. what would actually do at work?
16. what is your relationship like
17. what would you do for family time
18. what would you have for dinner
19. where would you eat
20. who would you eat with
21. what would you talk about
22. what would you do at night
23. who would you do it with
24. what would your thoughts be as you went to sleep
25. etc

www.youtube.com/watch?v=21mpQQ9COD4

For the past 1.5 weeks I’ve been adhering pretty closely to the GTD lifestyle. This was all kicked off by a mini gtd seminar I helped organize at Conjunctured. I asked Drew Arnold who I met after being featured in the Statesman a while back about mine and John Erik‘s use of GTD in our lives. Drew had contacted John and I in hopes of meeting others who shared his way of “getting things done.” Months after that initial meeting I found Drew at Conjunctured one day randomly and we got to talking and we thought we’d give it a go at having a GTD seminar at Conjunctured led by him. He really knows his stuff—I admire how much in control of his workflow he is. I hope to get to that point someday soon. I feel like I’m on my way.

Anyways, so after that seminar I started getting into it again. I realized the reason I “fell off the wagon” last time was the absence of a weekly review—an integral part to the success of the program. I was convinced that I “didn’t have time to do a weekly review”—apparently I just had too much stuff to do. I’ve since realized this was a horrible oversight and detrimental to the program’s success. I have since had two successful weekly reviews. And I must tell you it helps to provide an endcap to each week’s flow. And it also reinvigorates your trust in your personal system.

So right now I’m writing this post because I’m brainstorming my goals:

• 50,000+feet: Life
• 40,000 feet: Three- to five-year visions
• 30,000 feet: One- to two-year goals
• 20,000 feet: Areas of responsibility
• 10,000 feet: Current projects
• Runway: Current actions

It’s difficult. But I guess something of this magnitude should. I tell ya though, I’m super excited to discover what these goals are and share them publicly.

“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” – Vincent van Gogh