# Someday Is Today — Achieve Your Goals and Live Without Regret - Matthew Dicks  ## About - Author: Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal - Title: Someday Is Today — Achieve Your Goals and Live Without Regret - Matthew Dicks - Tags: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/2944f3ea-ee10-43f5-aeea-ef49fd1fd82b ## Highlights Letting go of unnecessary worry and concern leads to happiness and productivity Transcript: Speaker 1 And when you release that worry and that concern, you can become enormously happy and more productive because suddenly all the things that you're doing to sort of maintain an image that is utterly unnecessary. Once all those things fall away, you suddenly find yourself free, both in terms of the bandwidth you have to be thinking about the things you want to do. But also just frankly time, you know, I --- Setting Cruel and Challenging Goals Transcript: Speaker 5 So all of my goals that I set with the exception of a couple because I mean to myself, like I set goals about winning moth story slams because attending a moth story slam is just too easy for me. Speaker 6 I decided to set a couple that are going to be really cruel to me. Speaker 2 But most of them, almost all of them are I'm going to do a thing and I'm going to bring it to the point that I can release it to the world. Speaker 1 And then what the world does with it is sort of beyond my control. --- Writing 100 Letters: The Importance and Benefits Transcript: Speaker 2 I've just finished one today. Yeah, I just finished one today. My goal this year and it has been for the past five years is to write 100 physical letters. Speaker 6 Like handwritten or typed that are printed, put it in envelope with a stamp and mailed out into the world. Speaker 1 And I just finished that today. I wrote a letter and that was the 100th one that I'm going to be sending out. So that's important to me. I have discovered that writing letters is incredibly beneficial in enormous number of ways. --- The Value of Sending Letters and Acts of Kindness Transcript: Speaker 1 Another teacher who I wrote to now lives about two hours south of me on the Cape, on the ocean, is it invited me and my family to come for the day. Now we can't make it work this summer, but we'll make it work next summer. And so part of it is just you send the letter out because it means something to someone. It's a physical manifestation of your thought. And it's so much more valuable than saying something kind to someone because they get to hold on to it and they get to reread it because there's not enough positivity in the world. You know, I also do things like I send pride flags to bigoted human beings in our country. --- The Importance of Taking the Next Step in Achieving Goals Transcript: Speaker 7 So I was like, no man, just like, you know, focus on like, you know, get going, like, what is the next step? Speaker 3 And there's a line from the end of one of Brandon Sanderson's books, Oathbringer, where it's like the most important step a person can take is just the next one. And I think about that a lot. I think with any goal that I have, what is the next step I can take this week in one sitting that will just make progress in some way? And as long as I'm not wedded to the pace of progress or to the destination particularly, at least it's, you know, it's creating movement and movement generally for me at least leads to motivation and then makes life feel good and all that stuff. --- Importance of Incrementalism in Achieving Goals Transcript: Speaker 2 I know what my goal is, which is I want to appear on a screen for millions of people around the world in a educational or inspiring way. But your story is exactly what I am talking about. You know, the idea of incrementalism is so important. People don't believe in it. Speaker 1 The idea that tiny changes accumulated over time produce enormous results. Most people want a big gulp, a magic pill. They want to instantly have a million subscribers. They want to have a perfect YouTube video. Speaker 2 They want to have a book contract before they actually write the book or even before they even write the proposal, right? Speaker 1 Everyone sort of wants this enormous leap. --- Improve Your Balance by Brushing Your Teeth on One Foot Transcript: Speaker 2 And so one of the tricks I learned was when you're brushing your teeth, stand on one foot during the first minute of brushing your teeth and see if you can maintain that one foot and then switch to the other one. And so I've started doing that and I've asked people or I've told people this is a really good idea, you know, to help you improve your balance. And someone came back to me and said after a month, well, I don't really see my balance improving. And I said, well, first of all, you didn't really gauge your balance. You didn't assess your balance on day one to day 30. --- Advice from a Physician on Choosing a Medical Specialty Transcript: Speaker 4 Yeah, there was a great piece of advice that I got from one of the consultant physicians that I worked with in my fourth year of med school. Speaker 3 He asked me, he and I kind of got on and we were in the emergency department grabbing a coffee and he was like, hey, so what specialty do you want to do? And I was like, oh, he absolutely got three years of med school. I don't need to figure it out. Like, I don't really know. And he said, you know what, if I were you, I would just pick something and start moving in that direction because it's a lot easier to change direction when you're moving than when you're static. Speaker 2 It's great. I'm stealing that and using it forever. Speaker 4 That is good shit. Speaker 3 And then I decided, you know, what plastic surgery is the way forward? And then I started taking steps in that direction. --- Writing a Memoir: Start Anywhere Transcript: Speaker 1 I think sometimes people see a goal or a dream as a linear process, like A to B to C. And I think that's always a mistake too. So I was working with someone yesterday who said, I want to write a memoir. Speaker 2 And I said, we'll start writing a memoir. Speaker 1 And she said, I don't know where to start. And I said, do you have some good moments that you know you want to include? She said, oh, yeah. Speaker 2 I said, well, write those. She said, don't you have to start a book at the beginning? Speaker 1 I said, no, you write something. Just write chapter 15, if that's what you can write today, like save chapter one for the day you can write chapter one, but write whatever you can on a given day. And that applies for everything that we're doing. --- The Pitfalls of Mindless Binge-watching Transcript: Speaker 1 Are you crazy? You're watching something that is meaningless to you. And remember, I am the person who supports the woman who wants to watch every, the best 50 movies of all time sitting next to her husband, you know, enjoying a glass of wine. I'm all for it. But I think what happens is she is taking a purposeful approach to a dream and it has definition and meaning. Speaker 5 And I think the 100 year old version of herself will look back and go, thank goodness I watched the 50 greatest films ever made on this planet. Speaker 1 And thank goodness I spent that time with my husband. And thank goodness we talked about that meaningful art. But when it comes to Netflix or a phone, I think what most people do is they just follow the path of least resistance. They're just watching for watching sake. --- The Importance of Utilizing Every Available Minute for Creatives Transcript: Speaker 2 So thank goodness that the writers of the 1910s did not require Starbucks smooth jazz and two hour quiet blocks of time for them to get their work done, because that's just not a reality, especially if you actually want to make a thing. If you want to do something like a vegetable garden in your backyard or write a book or create a YouTube channel, if you actually want to do it, you should want to be doing it whenever it's possible. So I tell all of the creative people of the world 10 minutes is precious to you. --- Why Cutting Corners Can Save You Time and Money Transcript: Speaker 1 You can basically park wherever you want. And then last year, like on a college campus and maybe there's a security, even then do they have a tow truck? Are they going to tow you for parking in the wrong place at the university? At best, you're going to get a note, maybe a ticket. That's the time I'm at a university that I'm never coming back to. Thank you for your ticket. Good luck getting paid on that one, right? Which is another rule that I won't follow. But the problem is is when we follow all these rules, when we obsess, when we obsess in the expectations of others that are unnecessary, we lose time. So I encourage people to just sort of cut every corner you can because your --- Testing the World for Pain Points Transcript: Speaker 1 You didn't complete the data in that database. Speaker 5 And you go, oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry. I'll go do it right now. That won't happen again. Speaker 1 They leave and think, I just got in trouble. You didn't get in trouble. The bosses already forgotten about you. They just need the database done, right? Speaker 6 Don't do it again. Speaker 1 Now maybe trouble will happen, but test the world. Find where the pain points are. Most of them don't exist. You think there are pain points when really there's parking everywhere. Just take advantage of it. ---