One of my LinkedIn contacts recently tagged one of his posts with “Daydreaming, after all, is just a form of planning.” When I saw this line, I knew it was the missing piece for this article that I have been pondering over for quite a while.

Now first, to give credit where credit is due, the original quote is by American feminist Gloria Steinem, who said: “Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” And I believe she is absolutely right here. I have been tapping into (day) dreaming as a major source of motivation for all my life.

Dreaming needs a better PR-Agent

Daydreaming does not exactly enjoy the best reputation, especially not in the business word. If somebody is called a dreamer, we at best want to express that he is too naïve and nice for this world; more often, we think he is a lunatic who lost all his bearings.

If you are a self-respecting self-optimizing member of the business guild, you are not dreaming; you are goal-setting, you are priming, you use positive self-affirmations, visualization techniques. You might even go all out on the law of attraction, pep-talking yourself to ultimate success. Congratulations, if that works for you!

For me, self-pep talks in front of the mirror always felt somewhat ridiculous. I guess I am just not great at channeling my inner drill sergeant.

A Lifelong Dreamer

I admit I have always been a dreamer. From my early childhood on, I could spend hours imagining myself in a different place, time, and position.

When I was young, these daydreams could be wicked; I imagined myself as a medieval ruler or successful merchant, later as a thriving politician or management consultant.

The older I got, the more concrete and realistic my daydreams have become. They no longer are entirely fantasy scenarios, more visualizations of possible (even though ideal) outcomes of paths I am following in my real life.

Let me explain it with an example. 2005, I just graduated from University in Germany and ran my small online shop for videogames, a joint venture with friends in Hong Kong, who provided capital and the shop’s technology. I worked 16 hours a day, six days a week, adding products to the shop database, placing orders to suppliers, packing parcels, running to the post office, and at night doing customer service or marketing.

Now, that kind of lifestyle did not leave too much room for daydreaming. So, don’t picture me, sitting at the desk, head propped up on my heads, glaring dreamingly out of the window. I was pacing around or typing most of the day frantically.

But the 15 minutes’ walk from my apartment to my office and back, and the 45 minutes that I was lying in bed with onset insomnia, this was my time to daydream. Other great opportunities for daydreaming have been long commutes, slow runs, and flights.

Instead of dreaming myself away to a pacific island, I was seeing myself succeeding with my business. Running a successful e-commerce empire, presenting the annual report to hundreds of shareholders, and motivating my core management team (I had two student part-timers in my company at that time).

Dreaming to Fuel the Tank

Now you can poke fun at me and my unrealistic dreams, but I believe that these dreams were an elementary part of why I was able to put up with the unreal amount of mind-numbing work, all while facing dozens of obstacles and disappointments.

My daydreams provided a technicolor vision of why I should put in those grueling hours. They allowed me to skip a few steps in my journey and give me the feeling that all the pain might be worth it. It fueled my intrinsic motivation to go the extra mile, and quite often, I left my daydream state with clear plans on what to do next.

While I progressed through different career stations, my daydreams stayed with me. Running the local office for a European toy company, I was daydreaming about joining their board and moving to Europe, while working for a start-up, I was seeing us getting acquired. Now, none of these dream scenarios ever materialized, but not because I did not put in my work.

Law of Attraction vs. Law of Determination

To make it very clear, if it was not yet: I do not believe in the law of attraction.

I do not believe that if you wish for something (or visualize it) hard enough, you eventually will get it.

What I believe in instead is in the “Law of Determination,”; wanting something badly and putting in the work to get it, day in and day out. I believe that not wishful thinking, but grit and persistence will get you to achieve your goals. If you want to get to the mountaintop, the best way is to take one step in front of the other.

Unless you are a mindless robot, though, this grit needs to be fueled. This fuel source can be a massive chip on your shoulder, or a real purpose close to your heart, or like in my case, a motivational daydream to chase.

Dream with Caution and a WOOP of Scientific Validation

Now, like almost everything in life, daydreaming should be practiced in moderation.

Many psychologists consider maladaptive or excessive daydreaming an indicator of mental illness. If your daydream starts to replace reality, you have taken it too far. I am not advocating that you end up like Alice in Wonderland.

Instead, I have, without knowing it prior to writing this article, practiced what NYU Professor of Psychology Gabriele Oettingen calls “Mental Contrasting for Goal-Fulfillment.”

As Oettingen describes the findings of her research, the energy level of habitual positive daydreamers is often negatively affected. People who are overly positive about the future, often have less energy to put in the work to reach the lofty dream state; a phenomenon Oettingen and colleagues observed amongst others in dieting women, patients in rehabilitation, and graduates on the job search.

However, Professor Oettingen sees benefits in daydreaming, as vehicles to explore potential future realities, especially if practiced in combination with mental contrasting. Mental contrasting compares your reality to the success scenarios you daydream about, identifying the obstacles and steps needed to reach your goals.

My life-long daydreaming practice followed quite closely the practice she advocates based on her research, condensed in the WOOP-Framework (Wish – Outcome – Obstacle – Plan). For an excellent introduction to Oettingen’s work, I recommend this episode of The Psychology Podcast, with Scott Barry Kaufman interviewing Professor Oettingen. You can also find more information on WOOP or Mental Contrasting with Implementation Intentions (MCII) on the official website.

Just like in Oettingen’s framework, I am using my daydreams to explore positive scenarios of the future (Wish, Outcome), I contrast these outcomes with the reality (Obstacles) and take motivation from the visualization to make the necessary steps to get closer to my goals (Plan).

I also have always been able, and that is possibly the most important thing for a productive daydream practice to move on when there was is no plausible path to reach my daydream scenario anymore.

I have been in this situation multiple times in my career, and luckily, I realized it early enough to find a new challenge without wasting too much effort in vain.

What are your dreams? How do you fuel your motivational gas tank? What drives you? Have you heard about WOOP before?