"A goal is a dream with a deadline."
Napoleon Hill said that. I'm more than a bit ambivalent about Hill, and a bit embarrassed to quote him. More about that in a moment.
But I still like the quotation. I've been meaning for a while to set deadlines for finishing my book. Is it too excruciating that...I haven't gotten around to that yet? Yikes.
Another thing I've been "meaning to do" is to somehow take care of my problems with Comment moderation here on TOP.
I came up with an idea today.
Back when I spent more time at my desk, I would get up at six, begin working on a post more or less right away, finish somewhere between eleven and two, then work on comments. I'd revisit comments and moderate incoming ones after dinner and, most days, late at night as well.
But lately it just hasn't been working the way it used to. I sleep later now, and work more slowly. My morning routine, although orderly and well established, has expanded to the point that I don't get started working until very late, like nine, ten, or even eleven; I don't get to breakfast until eleven, twelve, or one or later, and by the time I finish a post, if I finish one at all, the other demands of the day are crowding in and clamoring for attention. My evenings are taken up by my involvement in my 12-step program, although I began to try to rein in those commitments a couple of months ago. Health issues are beginning to interpose, which is probably inevitable as we age. Somewhere in the day I need to practice pool (a casualty lately), practice typing, meditate, shop for and prepare food, take care of the yard, attend to the dog, and, you know, everything else.
And exercise. I need to exercise now because of my heart. I'm supposed to eat vegetarian and exercise if I want to remain...alive. Seems like something I shouldn't neglect.
This week we're experiencing a heat wave here. It's 88 degrees (31°C) here now. It was 68°F at eight this morning and forecast to be 80°F by eleven. So I figured I'd better get my walk out of the way first. While walking, the bright idea occurred to me that I might completely reorganize my mornings: get up, take care of the dog, walk, then shower and shave, then have my morning tea, and work on comments while I have my tea. Then start writing. Then, if writing takes till late afternoon or evening, no big deal. And comments would be finished early, and daily.
So I tried that this morning...
...And, um, failed. But I'll try again tomorrow. Maybe I can rejigger my mornings so I can get everything done in a timely fashion.
Napoleon Hill
Now to that scoundrel Hill. One of several originators of the self-help movement, Napoleon Hill was a sort of amalgam of motivational speaker, con man, and self-educated striver. He was a scammer and a swindler. He claimed Andrew Carnegie was his mentor, and wrote a whole book about their alleged meeting, long after Carnegie's death; Carnegie's biographer said he found zero evidence that Carnegie ever met Hill or knew who he was. Hill's most famous idea, that success will manifest itself for you if you simply visualize it, is embedded in the title of his most famous book, Think and Grow Rich, which still sells today.
His life was so chaotic and filled with allegations of personal and relational perfidy that he would probably richly require "cancellation" if he were alive today. (Born in 1883, he died in 1970.) Norman Vincent Peale, who wrote another early classic of self-improvement, The Power of Positive Thinking (note any similarity between those titles?), was a devoted acolyte of Hill's, and from there there's a direct line to Donald Trump, whose father was a follower of Peale and who attended Peale sermons when he was young. More than anyone, Hill puts me in mind of Frank Abagnale, the con man whose fabrications were made into the movie Catch Me If You Can and whose long second act, in which he pretends to be a reformed con man who advises the FBI about how to catch con men, is actually itself a con, full of lies. (The FBI says Abagnale gave a few lectures to agents but was never employed by the agency.) The former Republican representative George Santos is a more recent example of a similar sort of charlatan.
But if you never want to be rich, it's true that you probably never will be; visualizing does serve to clarify and solidify intentions. Hill got that much right. And good quotations can come from bad people. After all, there are a lot of interesting quotations that are believed to come from the original Napoleon, who was such a narcissist that members of his immediate family refused to attend his self-coronation as Emperor—an event that can stand as well as anything as the single most narcissistic act in history. I don't trust any of these characters as far as I could throw them. And yet...yes, a goal is a dream with a deadline. I just wish somebody else had said it!
Mike
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Featured Comments from:
MikeR: "I once kept a small wooden disk, about the size of a half-dollar, in my desk. It's gone now, but if I still had it, I'd mail it to you. It bore the letters 'TO IT.' I figure, what you need is to get a round TO IT. ;-> "
Paul: "I visit once or twice per week. The first thing I do is look for comments before reading an article about photography I may have some interest in. No comments and I just move on. The comments, the contributors and the dialogue generated is the difference maker."
KeithB: "When I was at Disneyworld they would have signs with Walt Disney quotes on the walls that covered new construction. One I got a picture of was 'Everybody needs deadlines.'"
