Here’s why you have been defining your vision all wrong
“You’ve got to have a vision.”
More than once, this is often said by famous business moguls such as Elon Musk, Jack Ma and Steve Jobs.
What exactly is a vision?
A vision is a dream or a goal that you wish to build, and it would steer your direction.
However, not everyone is visionary. In fact, not many great leaders have a good vision. Being visionary feels almost like it only happens to legendary people, those who are leading giant corporations and are making a great impact in the world.
Some people even feel it’s overrated:
“It’s the execution that’s important, you can dream all you want, but without hustling that means nothing.”
“It’s stressful to think about vision — what if I commit to one and it changes next time?”
“I have been thinking so hard about my vision every day, but I can’t find one.”
Is it really necessary to have a vision?
I have been through different stages of life and have been in both camps. I have come to realise that actually, the more important question is not about whether you need a vision, but rather if you have a correct understanding of what a vision actually is.
Here are 5 common myths and misconceptions about vision:
1. You need to be a leader to have a vision
Leaders need to have a vision, but even if you are not a leader in your career, it’s important to have a vision of what you want to achieve in your life — be it financial freedom, building a family with a set of values you believe in, building a career in a certain field.
That’s how you can lead yourself to reach the goals you envision.
2. It’s difficult to find a unique vision
What most people don’t realise is that being a visionary is an ability. Just like how not everyone is good in math, and not everyone can be as brilliant as Einstein to formulate E=mc².
You don’t actually have to invent formulas to be good at math. Similarly, you don’t have to force yourself to “invent” a unique vision.
You just have to train yourself to be good at visualising yours, and be good at discovering a vision that resonates with your “Why” — something that’s unique to you, shaped by your understanding and experiences.
Martin Luther King Jr. has this vision: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”
If you resonate with this, why do you have to look far away for another unique one? It doesn’t mean you can’t make this your own.
For example, if you are an African American starting a business in the US and are tired of discrimination you face as a Black person, and if you strongly resonate with Martin Luther King Jr., perhaps your own vision can be built upon King’s vision, maybe something along the lines of making the business landscape more inclusive for Black people and other minorities.
And that might become your dream.
3. Vision is restrictive because once you formulate one, it can’t be changed
I have come across many friends who are afraid of committing to a vision (even the thought of communicating it scares them) because they are afraid that if it changes along the way, their lives might be chained by this “vision” and they might end up committing to something they no longer want to do.
Some people also feel that it cripples their enjoyment of spontaneity and exploration of different possibilities in life.
In fact, having a vision provides the exact opposite of this. It gives you a direction in your life and allows you to enjoy the finest things in life without being distracted by the constant thought of “Am I doing it right?”
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. “— Lewis Carroll
What do I mean by this? Imagine you have a dream/vision of owning a villa in Bali. You might start picking up books about architecture before you even own one. You might be charmed by beautiful villas and even join seminars about investing in a property.
And you might start to travel to different interesting destinations to gather more ideas. Somehow you might stumble upon a country house in New Zealand, and you might fall in love with it.
Now all this knowledge about architecture, ideas about beautiful villas and investment skills that you’ve picked up along the way will come in handy to help you make this dream a reality.
Imagine if you haven’t started dreaming about that villa in Bali, you might not even step out of that door, and you might not even discover that you actually want a country house in New Zealand.
In this scenario, does your vision change? Yes — you might no longer want a villa in Bali, but the game-changer here is that it helps you open your eyes and be curious, to do things that you have perhaps never thought of.
These help to help open endless doors of opportunities for you.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.” — Steve Jobs
It’s ok if your vision changes along the way. You will find that after you connect the dots, the fundamentals of what you are looking for deep inside you perhaps have not changed after all.
4. I already know what I want in my life
If you are like me and know very early on in life what you are looking for, it can be a dangerous smokescreen that gives you an illusion of what really matters.
The world is changing at a rapid pace, and a vision is a living thing — it can adapt and change accordingly too. If we stop dreaming because we already know what we want, it can cause us to be confined by this vision and become inflexible and unwilling to try new things. (Our business has very few major breakthroughs precisely because of this.)
What differs a good vision from a bad vision is that a good vision has great clarity. So you need to continue to dream about your vision to make it clearer and more complete.
Why is clarity important? I once had a conversation over dinner with a few friends:
Friend A mentioned casually that he has been searching for a good job that pays well. But after dinner when everyone left, no one remembered it.
On the other hand, Friend B said he has been dreaming about having a job opportunity at a certain renowned media company, and he wanted to learn world-class videography, journalism and storytelling. He even started a video channel to put his craft into practice and spoke about his desire to move to Japan.
We were moved by his stories. After dinner, one friend started linking him up with his family members living in Japan so Friend B could get some insights. Another friend subsequently struck up a conversation with his colleagues about successful video companies that are hiring.
You can see that in these two scenarios, something powerful is at play here — a vision with more clarity attracts more energy. It connects you to people and opportunities that you never thought possible!
“Clarity of vision creates clarity of priorities” — John C. Maxwell
“The strength and clarity of your vision will lift you out of the depth of any hardship .” — Robin Sharma
5. My vision might be stupid and I’m afraid people might judge
If you think like this, you are not the only one.
I used to be someone like this. I preferred to stay behind the scenes to work out the details, and I only shared my vision with others when I had accomplished it. I was afraid of failure, of disappointing myself and others, and I was very afraid that people would judge me if I conveyed a grand and majestic vision but ultimately failed to achieve it.
The truth is, any big ideas challenging the status quo will attract a lot of naysayers.
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” Thomas Watson, president of IBM in 1943.
“That’s cute — but don’t tell anyone about it,” Engineer Steven Sasson shared with The New York Times the response by Kodak’s management to his digital camera invention.
“What the hell is cloud computing? . . . I mean, it’s really just complete gibberish.” Larry Ellison, executive chair and CTO of Oracle.
“There are many moments where a voice assistant is really beneficial, but that doesn’t mean you’d never want a screen. So the idea of [Amazon Echo] not having a screen, I don’t think suits many situations,” Philip Schiller, Apple Fellow, former senior VP of Worldwide Marketing for Apple.
I have learnt through time that frequently discussing your vision with other people will only allow you to gain more input, sharpen and stress-test it so it can gain greater clarity.
It’s also a ball of energy that will attract and recruit other people to work towards your vision — just like the dinner conversation I shared above.
Martin Luther King Jr. gave his speech on ‘I Have a Dream’ during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963. This unprecedented event attracted over 250,000 demonstrators from all over the US. And it only took Bayard Rustin and 200 volunteers to set this all up — think about all the logistics, budget, etc. It was incredible for them to pull through this in less than two months’ time and they didn’t even have a formal event organiser.
How it came together was that people deeply believed in the cause that King was fighting for. They were greatly motivated and wanted to play a part in it. They really wanted to improve the economic conditions of African Americans and believed that King could lead them to make it a reality. People arrived in droves to listen to his speech. And note that King did not say “I have a plan” but rather “I have a dream”. Think about the incredible power of a vision like this!
So if you have a dream, share it! You never know the powerful impact it might have on people around you.
Fun fact: Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, gets their staff to practise sharing their visions with their teammates through an activity called “Future Press Release”. Sharing their visions openly artificially creates accountability partners among themselves and this can even mobilise the entire team to work towards their dream.
How do you create a vision that perpetuates endless energy?
Once you understand how vision works, you might now wonder, so how can I create my vision too?
Here are some tips I’ve picked up recently. With practice, you can be a visionary too!
1. Set a daily routine to dream about your vision every day
The truth is that dopamine (injected through social media and other things that provide instant gratification) has deprived people of the ability to think on their feet. (Recommended watch: The Social Dilemma.)
I used to constantly crave for this. My email inbox was my worst addiction and I was constantly on the roll to clear off tasks, not realising that these tasks actually seized my day when I should be seizing my day instead.
To reduce this addiction, I tried to do a Dopamine Detox. It involves a one-day “hard reset” during which I am not allowed to touch my smart devices for the entire day.
It was difficult initially. I had to resist checking my messages. But it gets easier after the first few hours and you’ll start enjoying going through your day without distractions from your devices. The experience made my mind much clearer too.
As I did this detox more regularly, I realised that I no longer felt compelled to check my messages and emails the first thing in the morning. Instead, I set a daily one-hour “dreaming session” routine on my calendar to sharpen my visions (personal and professional).
I also started to pen down my thoughts in a journal, which allows me to draw connections between my thoughts and give me a more complete picture. This leads to my next point.
2. Set up separate digital and analogue desks
While our digital devices make things much easier than before, they simply provide too many structures and limitations that stifle creativity.
Things are just too neat, and digital devices give you the power to instantly rewrite and edit.
Creativity is often physical — it is messy, dotted with doodles, handwritten notes, connections and all that. Digital devices just don’t allow that flexibility as much (and together with the bazillion of dopamine you get from devices, it worsens matters).
So I heeded Austin Kleon’s advice in his book, ‘Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative’ (recommended read!). I set up separate digital and analogue desks to allow me to do just that, and got myself a whiteboard and journal on which jotted down all my ideas and only transferred them to my digital devices when I’m done.
If you are a creative person, doing this can help get you out of your creator’s block too!
3. Once you are done, share it with people!
This is self-explanatory. Even if you think that your vision is too simple or silly, other people might have a different perspective and having a conversation can help you see it better.
Go out, talk to people, and continue to mould and shape your vision and ideas.
It helps to keep the momentum going, create accountability partners and helps you work towards achieving your vision. In fact, this post is one of the creative results of my vision!
4. Read more books
This is the most effective method to pick the minds of the most brilliant people in the world.
For example, reading ‘Think like Amazon’ almost feels like Jeff Bezos is giving me advice on my business. You will probably not get that amount of condensed ideas and learnings with a complete context elsewhere.
Reading allows you to understand how these great minds work and give you more ideas!
I’m keen to exchange reading lists with anyone who’s interested. Feel free to ping me at terence@tripcanvas.co or on LinkedIn and we can chat!
5. Create incremental goals and work one step at a time towards your vision
Lastly, all big things start small. While recognizing that we can as ambitious as we want, it really helps to break that 5-year plan into years, months and weeks, create shorter-term goals and work rigorously to achieve them.
Without this, all great 5 or 10-year plans will just be mere talk, and without execution, they mean nothing.
“Where there is no vision, the people perish“ — Proverbs 29:18 KJV
Do you need someone to discuss your vision with?
Ping me on LinkedIn and we can chat and exchange ideas!
Edited by Candice Neo.
