Do you have a compelling future?

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Many of us are aware of the important idea of having a compelling future, a future we're going for that gives us energy and excitement and helps create alignment between our Now and our Next.

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But how many of us consistently do that? Not many.

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Do you know the easy way to create a compelling future?

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One reason that we haven't is that we don't know how to do it effectively. We may think of something like buying a new house within the next two years. We think that would be nice, but it doesn't give us much juice and excitement now.

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Long-term directions, targets, and goals are important, but just by themselves they're unlikely to give us much energy and excitement now in our day-to-day living.

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What I've discovered is that shorter term activities and targets do the trick, assuming we've done any necessary Now-Next Integrity work so that both our Next and Now are looking forward to each event. And it not just a "compelling future." It "compelling futures"!

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Today, tomorrow, this week, maybe as far out as a month

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Activities and targets for the current day. For tomorrow. For a week out. Maybe two weeks out. On occasion, even something a month out can pull us forward powerfully.

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Once an event or target starts reaching out much beyond a month, it's power to provide current-day excitement and energy drops away.

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Check with yourself to do your own calibration

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Your personal calibration of how quickly this energy drop-off effect takes place may be somewhat different than mine. In general, however, we humans are designed this way, with activities and targets providing more excitement and energy the shorter the time we have to wait for them.

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Creating and maintaining a cornucopia of near-term compelling futures

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Consequently, creating and maintaining a life and lifestyle that you love the living of requires that we populate our near-term future with things we're planing for and looking forward to.

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Here are some current examples (on October 20, 2021) in my own life

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Many of my planning-and-looking-forward-to items are recurring, either daily, every weekday, or periodically.

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• Getting up at 2am, knowing that this will give me a lot of high-energy morning time to do other things on my looking-forward-to list

• Princess and Mystery eagerly greeting me when I get up

• Guesstimating my day with time allocations using Excel

• Spending one to two hours a day refurbishing or creating new links on AskDwightHow.org (like I'm doing right now)

• Doing longevity research with Riki as my research listener from 7am-8am every weekday

• Taking my daily nap for 30-90 minutes starting about 11:20 am

• Talking with Heidi about plans and issues for about an hour every weekday afternoon

• Dancing vigorously for two-plus minutes to music like "Cinnamon Girl" with Heidi as my audience

• Talking/coaching with each of my clients (usually 30 minutes each) every weekday morning

• Leading my "English Corner for the Curious" almost every Sunday from 2pm-5pm

• On many Saturdays, starting from 9am, talking with strangers in the parks and on the streets with an interpreter/friend...then checking into an Airbnb for the night, returning home early Sunday morning

• Paying off my credit cards bills every month

• Sending out birthday greetings to friends and others in my super birthday list

• Calculating my bank account increase (usually) on the 4th of each month to see how much more money I can transfer into my "play money" account

• Pushing myself full-out with energetic music for 20 seconds on my exercise bike three times each day M-W-F

• Enjoying weekly, every-two-weekly, and monthly 30-minute telephone calls with about 14 different friends I keep in touch with regularly

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Other activities are more ad hoc or sporadic.

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• Opening "surprise" gifts of things I ordered online that I somewhat forgot I ordered

• Working with Heidi to select something new to order online

• Going to the ATM to get a load of cash from my bank in the USA (it makes me feel so powerful)

• Asking clients to introduce me to someone they think might be open to accepting a gift-coaching session from me

• Doing ten minutes of house organization on many days

• Enjoying giving a gift-coaching session to a potential client

• A discussion planned with Michael Wang to explore him taking on the role of "site jazz-it-up master" for AskDwightHow.org

• Talking with Heidi about the next thing I'm going to change in my office to make it "more perfect"

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An ongoing process

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Tweaking this and that, scheduling a new appointment, brainstorming to create something new, creating a gift out of a breakdown...these are all part of the day-in-and-day-out flow to maintaining a steady stream of compelling near-term futures that excite me and pull me forward.

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Do it now...treat yourself to the best futures ever

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Indulge! Get your Now and Next creating together an ongoing slew of things to look forward to. Each hour. Each day. Each week.... Don't risk an energy shortage!