It’s dangerous for a builder of entertainment to get hung up on a dream. It’s even more dangerous to get hung up on a singular project as a vehicle to that dream.
I see a lot of people thinking they need to make a perfect video to promote their upcoming youtube channel, then everything will fall into place. I hear people say they need to make a great album and that will be the thing.
This is the dreamer’s timeline.
We’re dreaming and waiting for the single project to save us, to be our destination.
It’s unlikely to work out.
There’s a lot to do. Making a great whatever is hard and…
- we won’t know it’s great until people receive it
- sometimes we don’t know what we’re working on as it’s developing
- holding on to an idea can drag us into endless work for a bad goal
- our success often comes from surprising directions
- the project can seem big and drag on
- our perfectionism can prevent us from shipping
- we can burn ourselves out making the thing and not have energy for the other parts of it like distributing, promoting, packaging
I’ve gone thru so many ups and downs in my career by getting excited about something, killing myself working on it, then not getting the dream success. This non-vulnerable approach also prevented me from noticing the success that was there, but unplanned.
Zoltar’s Timeline is way more fun
A fortune teller knows we have success heading our way. He doesn’t tell us what success it is. There are many steps on our timeline, but he doesn’t reveal how many or what they are. While this feels maybe less exciting, it’s also less of everything bad in making entertainment.
Keep the hope alive
By trusting Zoltar, we know that we don’t have to see the success on the horizon. We don’t have to track it or perfect ourselves toward it. We just have to do the next step. We can’t see the hour-hand move.
Move fast, do a lot
We gotta get that great work done now, because there are gonna be a lot more steps. This helps me a lot because my impatience attracts me to the dreamer’s timeline. I want to get to the finish line. With the dreamer’s timeline, the finish line only comes from doing perfect work. On Zoltar’s timeline; the finish line comes when we produce, ship, and persist. Success comes no matter what. It’s right there in the crystal ball.
Our job is to trust Zoltar and make lot’s of great things because there’s more to do than we can ever see. The success is most likely more rewarding than we can plan.