Were you ever told off for daydreaming at school?
I remember whenever I’d look out the window or my mind would run away with me and my imagination gets going, particularly at school, the teacher snaps you back into the classroom and they say, “Killen, pay attention. Are you daydreaming?”
In this blog post, I want to talk to you about why not only is daydreaming good for you, it’s actually critical to the success of your business.
Tell me, if any of this sounds like you, you run a marketing funnel business, but you seem to struggle to create a longer-term vision for where you want to go.
Maybe you have a lack of vision for the future about what it is you want from life. Maybe you feel you’re comfortable, perhaps a big part of this lack of vision comes from not being completely confident in your own abilities.
Maybe you feel that if you were to think too big, then you’re above your station and that you don’t really want to step outside your comfort zone and that people have a go at you.
I used to constantly be told, “Stay inside your lane. No business is like that. They’re not for you. That’s not how people succeed.”
Maybe you struggle with the entire concept of meditation. I know that I used to really struggle with the idea of just sitting down and doing nothing or even reading. Just sitting down and reading was really difficult for me to do.
I think a lot of businesses, particularly one-person businesses, if you’re running like a marketing funnel business, which is very tactical and there’s a lot of stuff, there’s actual physical things that you do.
We struggle with words like vision and strategy, and we see them as a bit fluffy and that real work is done through the grind and hammering it out and doing more is more.
I know that a big problem for me is that I would often feel guilty if I wasn’t working. If I was sat on the couch, doing nothing for 10 minutes, I’d feel extremely guilty and that I should be doing something more.
I should be building or creating something and that’s very difficult to balance. And if you’ve ever got any of these kinds of imbalances, you know just how hard that is to deal with.
I know that I used to struggle to spend time visualizing the future of my business and visualizing strategy. I always saw strategy as a really wooly fluffy term that was used by consultants to justify wonky words like synergy and stuff.
Daydreaming might just be one of the most important parts of running any type of business
Strategy and vision, and thinking about the future in daydreaming, might just be one of the most important parts of running any type of business.
Our society values hard work and labor over effectiveness. What I mean by that is grinding the workout and doing an ineffective job for eight hours a day is valued more than someone who can get the exact same results in one hour a day.
We’re often told that it’s cheating, particularly in school, if you learn or get someone else to get the exact same results as you.
It’s like saying, I want you to list a number from one to a hundred list out all the numbers, and just looking over, copying someone else who lists out the numbers. Despite the fact you both get the exact same results, you’re told you’ve cheated.
They say, “No, no, no. It’s because it’s about learning and it’s about understanding how to educate yourself and the love of learning.”
Well, then you should measure my love of learning and my ability to learn, and the growth of learning, not measure the statistical differences between two exactly the same papers.
Daydreaming is not hard work and that daydreaming won’t get you anywhere.
We’re also taught that daydreaming is not hard work and that daydreaming won’t get you anywhere.
It’s almost a running joke that you see kids staring out the windows with these fantastical visions inside their heads with their imagination. It’s stamped out hard. It’s stamped out repeatedly. People say that it’s due to a lack of concentration.
I remember constantly being told that my problem was concentration and categorically I can prove that’s wrong. How is it that a kid can spend hours playing a video game? Evidently, it’s not concentration is their problem. It’s their engagement with the topic.
We’re told that when we daydream and we’re not engaged with the incredibly dull teacher, who’s not able to keep us entertained or the topic isn’t able to keep us entertained and we start daydreaming, we’re told we shouldn’t do that.
The problem is that daydreaming when you’re a child, the only thing you know about is story. You have these fantasies with dragons and superheroes and Vikings and zombies, and those are the things you imagine, or you’ve imagined yourself as a famous footballer or a rockstar because that’s what you’re exposed to.
As it’s stamped out, as we grow up, that lack of vision causes us to not be able to fantasize about the future for our own business.
If you want to start thinking of a bigger picture and you’re frustrated with where you are within your business, you feel that you want more, you’re not getting enough income, you’re not getting enough revenue, you’re not getting enough customers, you don’t get the recognition.
If there’s something missing where you think about your vision is probably a huge part. I kind of equated it with not knowing where you want to go.
If you’re sailing a ship, if you’re the captain of a ship and you think, “Oh, we’re just going to keep going around in circles.” Obviously, you’re never going to get to that final destination that island full of treasure.
But because there are kids who were taught to not daydream, as we grow up and we see the other things that are possible. We should still be daydreaming about the things that could be.
I’ve got stuff on the back of my board here. That’s essentially visions and daydreams about where I want to go. This is stronger than any of that visualization secret shit.
Bill gates will spend like days at a time just reading books because he sees that as a part of his strategy. It’s a part of opening up your mind and thinking about what’s possible.
One of the problems when we do like very tactical work as funnel builders, it can seem like we should just be doing the tactical work, the grind, we should be doing eight hours work.
By daydreaming, your mind escapes, and things become clear
Whereas if you visualize and think, what would solve this problem without having to do more? Actually, I could do all of this in an hour if I just solve this thing. By daydreaming, your mind escapes, and things become clear.
But like inception, if anyone’s ever seen that film where the idea is you can plant an idea in someone’s head and over time it will grow. Daydreaming is a little bit like that.
If you allow yourself just 15 minutes, that’s all you have to do, just 15 minutes to sit completely without any stimuli, no books, no screens, no TV, no phone, no radio, nothing, completely in silence and allow your mind to wander.
You might come across a very poignant idea and at first it’s very hard, 15 minutes will seem like hours, but the next time you do it, it seems slightly shorter and easier and so on and so forth.
As you keep doing it, those tiny ideas that you have about, “Actually, maybe I should be changing this about the world, or maybe if I approach my audience with this, or maybe if I focused on this market or this product.”
Daydream about where you could go, that idea eventually spreads, and that becomes your reality
You daydream about where you could go, that idea eventually spreads, and that becomes your reality.
This sounds very Lala and woo and high level and hippie shit. But the reality is this stuff works, businesses that are successful and profitable, you’ll find their C level and director level businesses have strategy and vision time.
They have time to daydream about where they want to go. They read books about the future and they don’t see it as cheating work or not doing any work or not being effective.
They see it as, “Okay, where do we need to go next on the map? What’s out there next that we could go after.
People who daydream make an impact
What it boils down to is that people who daydream make an impact. It’s as simple as that if you’re willing to daydream and think what’s the better future that I create for the world. You are more likely to make an impact.
This also brings up a tactical level as well, because you’ll start thinking about tasks and work in a different manner.
