"If you make lists of lofty goals, it can be easy to leave them to accumulate, as happens sometimes, into a mountain of to-do's and notes and half-forgotten plans. Dreaming alone is seductive, even a little sweet, since it lacks the pain of trying. So it feels proper to prize attempts more than dreams. You should have ideals, but you cannot only... See more

Dreams are an essential part of a vital life, but they cannot become more real than reality. The trap I fall into is letting my fondness for an ideal future become a fixation on fantasy. Dazed by the divine image of how things could look, instead of working with the raw and gritty reality of my real life.

Make A Plan A specific goal is better than a vague goal. But in the quest to set the perfect goal, we often miss one crucial detail—all goals are surprisingly useless without a certain type of plan.