Calling all dreamers and do-ers

You, yeah you. You’ve got goals. Whether they are short-term, long-term, you’ve got dreams, you’ve got aspirations, you’ve got those little side projects and creative initiatives you want to undertake.

Now ask yourself this: How often do you say you’re going to do something, and then actually commit to doing it? Who helps keep you accountable, when you’re not able to do so yourself? What do you do when the things you want-to-do aren’t necessary have-to-dos?

What does everyone else want to achieve? Do they always succeed? In what ways do they struggle? How do they deal when motivation/discipline is low? How do they prioritize current-life with an aspirational future-life?

Those are the exact questions we want to find the answers to.

(And if you don’t want to read any further, at least check us out on Instagram @doing.a.thing!)

My friend Sefunmi and I met up for the first time in December of last year to talk about doing a project together. We started off with interviewing non-technical PMs to understand their path to product and how they landed their dream job. But just like those aspiring PMs struggled, we (or perhaps it was just me?) also struggled: with hitting self-made deadlines, with staying disciplined and motivated when life “got in the way” of completing something that was simply a “could-do” rather than a “have-to-do”.

So we took a step back and reconsidered.

What was at the root of all of this? This struggle? This desire to complete something, to reform and redefine ourselves. How many times did it take someone to say “I’ll definitely get to it this time!” for them to actually get to it? How much of the success we see begins like that?

Those are the true unseen stories and journeys of success. The little wins. The little steps we take to reach our goal, whether the goals are career-oriented, health-oriented, life-oriented. And it’s those voices that we want to share. We hope you’ll follow along in our journey!

How are we going to gather those answers?

We want to showcase do-ers and amplify their stories and journeys. Just regular people who are passionate about doing things and achieving their goals, whatever those goals may be.

We’ll be finding folks who are either planning on doing a thing, or already in the process of doing a thing. We’ll follow them through their journeys, share to others their progress, learnings, failures, successes along the way.

We want to capture folks as they strive towards their goals — whether they succeed, stall, pivot or quit all together. Regardless of outcome, it’s about sharing the journey, which (we hope) will ultimately inspire and motivate others into action, while simultaneously keeping the featured do-ers themselves accountable when asked for updates.

Who is a do-er? Am I one?

You’re a do-er if you fit into any of the below:

• You have either short-term, medium-term, or long-term goals
• You may not have an inviting platform to talk to about your goals, especially on an ongoing basis
• You want to share your visions, thoughts and annoyances as you strive towards your goals with a group of other similarly-minded people
• You have a thing you want to do, anything in the world!

And that’s about it!

Whether your goals are to learn a new skill, secure your first office job, land a DJ residency at a local nightclub, start your own family, learn to cook a new type of cuisine, hit 250K followers on Youtube, finally finish your kitchen renovations, open up a bubble tea food truck, finish your online 3D design lessons, that all counts.

What exactly does it mean to be a “showcased do-er”?

Let’s assume you’re one of the do-ers we’re showcasing. What that means is we (Sefunmi and I) will be following you along your journey and syncing up with you regularly along the way. We’ll be creating written artifacts, blog posts, podcast episodes, video content, essentially an assortment of applicable mixed mediums with the goal of sharing your journey with the world.

I still don’t get it — do you mind giving an example?

Let’s say you’re looking to learn Japanese, with the goal of being able to get around easier when you visit next year. We’ll catch up with you biweekly or monthly, and we’ll gather your progress in a nicely consumable package and help share it! The benefit to you is that you’ve got us to hound you for progress, an audience that’s rooting for your success. The benefit to others is that they can see examples of other people who may be trying to reach similar goals. They can realize they’re not alone in the struggle.

Cool, how do I sign up to be featured?

We’ll be releasing more information on this soon, so stay tuned by following us on Instagram @doing.a.thing. Honestly, we’re still trying to figure this out, so if you’ve got any ideas, let us know!