A Logical Reason Why You Shouldn't Give Up on Your Dream

When I moved to Los Angeles, I gave myself a deadline. If I didn’t “make it” in ten years, I would give up and do something else. I hit the ten year mark this past September, but I never seriously considered giving up, at least not beyond the occasional bout of pessimistic fatalism that I suspect all writers go through. Writing is what brings me joy, so I’m probably going to do it until I’m no longer physically or mentally capable of using a keyboard (or telepath typing on my iPhone 50 implant or whatever technology becomes).

People quit things for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes, if a goal no longer serves you or is no longer practical (wanting to own a pager store, for example) it’s fine to pivot into something else. But most of the time, people quit for two underlying reasons:

1. Achieving their dream seems too hard

2. They aren’t making enough measurable progress. 

Let’s start with the first reason, that achieving your dream seems too hard, and see why that's not the most logical reason to quit.

Say your dream is to sell a screenplay in five years . There are many steps on this journey, like improving your writing, seeking and incorporating feedback, networking with people in the industry, placing in competitions, and more. In most cases, you’ll have to repeat this process with multiple scripts until you find one that resonates with the right person. This can be a painful cycle of failure and growth, not to mention you’ll also potentially be dealing with work, school, and family at the same time. With this in mind, bailing on your dream may seem like a viable option.

But five years is going to pass matter what you do. You could spend that time making progress towards your goals, or you could decide that it’s more comfortable to watch TV and play video games. The question is: five years down the road, would you rather have not sold a screenplay, or have sold one? 

This may seem like I’m oversimplifying the issue, but what this question actually does is dispel a pervasive myth about chasing a goal that seems insurmountable: that it’s reached by an overwhelming display of willpower or grit. That’s almost never the case. Rather, big goals or dreams are reached by consistently showing up and working at them little by little, brick by brick. Just because a goal is hard, doesn't mean you won't ever achieve it. Most things that are worth having require hard work and consistency, which leads me to point #2 above, that it’s often difficult to measure progress towards big dreams.

The solution here is to break your dream into smaller steps. In the screenwriting example above, the goal of “selling a screenplay” is both too nebulous and too daunting. It would be easy to feel like a failure when this is your win condition. Try moving the goalpost back to “finish a screenplay” or even further back to “write for twenty minutes a day.”

By using this little psychological trick, you’ll have changed what success looks like and made it easier for yourself to consistently win. You’ll be able to more accurately measure your progress because every day that you actively work on your dream is progress. The beauty of this approach is that while something like “start a business” comes with a huge time commitment, a smaller step such as “email three prospective clients” doesn’t. Even if you only have the bandwidth to dedicate one hour a week towards pursuing your dream, that’s 52 hours a year more than you would have if you gave up. That’s 260 hours of progress over 5 years, which is a significant chunk of time. 

And again, life happens. There are so many things that are out of our control. You might have two months go by where, due to a variety of circumstances, you can’t put any time into chasing your dreams. That’s ok. As long as you get back to them when you can. To settle for anything less is a disservice to yourself

Keep at it. Keep trying. Keep seeking your joy.