A Guide to Achieving Your Dreams

A lot of people have dreams they wish to achieve. I, like most humans, too have a dream. I have decided to document the path to achieving my dream, so that others may follow in my path and increase the happiness-even if it is only momentarily-in their lives. So what is my dream? I discovered it last week, and excitedly tweeted it:

I used to be content with life. That is, until I discovered I could have this hanging on my wall: http://is.gd/sH2

Yes!  The VELOCIRAPTOR HUNTING TROPHY!

Can you even IMAGINE how amazing it would be? To have guests over, give them a tour of your home, while nonchalantly pointing out the velociraptor head hanging on the wall along with your bookcase of Django books? You watch their eyes literally jump out of their sockets, as you try your darndest to hide that smirk that’s just begging to burst free. They ask you, “how did you manage to kill a velociprator?!” You reply, “by following Anton Nguyen’s Guide to Achieving Your Dreams of course!”

Let me outline the 7-step process for you.

1. Decide what your dream will be
2. You need to deeply desire your dream
   
3. Visualize yourself achieving the goal
4. Make a plan for the path you need to follow to achieve the goal
5. Commit to achieving the goal by writing down the goal
6. Establish times for checking your progress in your calendar
7. Review your overall progress regularly

See? Its that easy! I will show you how I plan to achieve my dream, so that you can see an example.

1) Decide What Your Dream Will Be

This is important. It may be obvious, but you’ll be surprised how many people don’t know what they want. So take some time and think about it. As you know, I’ve already decided. Velociraptor head, the most badass of dinosaurs, hanging on my wall!

2) Deeply Desire Your Dream

This is what will motivate you through all this. When you’re succeeding, it will be easy to work. When you’re not, it will be difficult. So you need to want it badly, to drive you to achieve it. Besides, weak desires produces weak results.

3) Visualize yourself achieving the goal

The mind is a powerful thing.  Studies with patients, drugs, and placebos have shown people’s health improving drastically, if they thought they were given the real drug. To put it into perspective, a wish man once said, “if you put your mind to it, you can achieve anything!” So imagine yourself doing it, and it will happen. Here’s me imagining:

4) Make a plan for the path you need to follow to achieve the dream

You gotta really think ahead and make a plan. You can’t just go around randomly just “hoping” it will happen to you. I guess this has parallels to software engineering, where you must plan everything out. Here’s my plan.

1. Find out if an island of dinosaurs exists
2. If it exists, visit the island. Then go to step 15
3. If it doesn’t exist, find an amber mine
4. Find a piece of amber with a mosquito in it
5. Extract blood from mosquito, use blood to find raptor DNA
6. Once found, repair deteriorated DNA by filling the gaps with frog DNA
7. Reconstruct raptor, and have it hatch from an egg
8. MAKE SURE YOU’RE THE FIRST ONE THE RAPTOR SEES!
9. If you’re the first one the raptor sees, the congratulations! The raptor thinks you’re its mother!
10. Raise raptor until it is of an appropriate size for your wall, then chop its head off.
11. If you are NOT the first one the raptor sees, you’re in trouble. Build a pen.
12. Put the raptor in the pen
13. Build security infrastructure to raise/feed raptor
14. Make sure ALL doors have rounded door knobs with NO handles! (So that if the raptors escape, their claws won’t be able to turn the doors. They’re really smart you know!)
15. When raptor is of age, “accidently” turn off the power, so that the raptor can escape
16. Smear your blood in a trail leading to you
17. The raptor will smell your blood, follow it, then it will get to a handle-less door with a round door knob! As it tries to learn how to open it, it will be distracted, which gives you a chance to chop its head off!
18. If by chance, you’re in a place with doors with handles, be scared. Very scared. Fortunately, you have the backup plan. Clone a T-Rex.
19. Have the T-Rex kill the raptor
20. Chop its head off

See? Wasn’t it that easy?

5) Commit To Achieving The Goal By Writing Down The Goal

This is almost like the “first step” step you take. It makes it a reality. It sets it in stone. It makes you see what the goal is, so that you can’t change it later on. I’ve already done it, so lets move on to the next step.

6) Establish Time Frames

This is important. You gotta know when each step will happen, so that you can plan accordingly. It helps you keep track of your progress, lets you see if you’re running late or not, etc… My plan has a lot of uncertainties, so I can’t provide dates, only “estimates” of how long it will take.

1. 5 minutes. Just google it. Apparently, a place does exist called “Isla Nubar”.
2. 8 hour flight. Done!
3. Easy. Google it, book a flight. I’m there! 8 hour flight.
4. Easy. Get the miners to do it. Next!
5. You might have to go through a few mosquitoes. Should take a most a day.
6. Easy! Get a network of computers to collaboratively do this and you’ll be done in 24 hours (DES was broken in that time frame)
7. Incubation times for birds are like a month. So I will assume it takes the same amount of time here.
8. 10-15 minutes. You gotta wait around until it hatches that’s all.
9. 1 minute.  After it sees you, you gotta play with it a bit, to let your image register.
10. This could take a while. So you choose how big of a raptor head you want and raise it until its that big. Should be 1 month to 2 years.
11. Construction? 1 month.
12. 3 Hours. You gotta build a crane to lower the raptor down.
13. 1 month. Construction + Security stuff to build.
14. This should take just a day. Hire constructor to change all the door handles.
15. Finding the power supply should take an hour, maybe quicker if you can find the blueprints. Turn it off, then run for cover.
16. You have to do this quickly, or else the raptor will tear you to bits and pieces. I’d say 1 minute. You HAVE to finish it in 1 minute. Once they sense you, they can accelerate at a rate of 4m/s^2, reaching a top speed of 25 m/s. You do not want to die! This would be the opposite of achieving your dreams!
17. 10 minutes. It might take a while to chop its head off.
18. The T-Rex cloning should take as long as the raptor cloning. So I’d say a month.
19. 5 minutes of awesomeness!
20. 10 minutes. Dream Achieved!

7) Review your overall progress regularly

You gotta always re-examine your progress, to make sure you’re on track! Or you will fall behind! So for example, if I havn’t reconstructed and hatched a raptor yet after 1 month, then I know that obviously, one of my scientists have screwed up, meaning I would have to fire them, and hire someone who really knows what they’re doing.

There you go! How to achieve your dreams! I’ll be starting up soon, make sure you come by in a few months, to check out my “bookcase”.