On Dreamshaping: The Project Worksheet

Mark McNease

Whether you call it a Dreamshaping Worksheet or a Project Worksheet, it’s one of the most valuable items in the Dreamshaper’s toolbox. I started keeping mine a year ago in the form of an Excel spreadsheet. It’s remarkably simple, and deceptively powerful. Why? Because it helps me see, right there in front of me, what I’ve accomplished in the previous weeks and months.

It’s so easy to become discouraged and think we’re not getting anywhere, or that we’re somehow stuck in the same small box we felt confined in yesterday and the day before. But by keeping an easy list or spreadsheet that we can add to every week, what we actually get done becomes clear – excitingly, irrefutably, invigoratingly clear! Each week, month by month, I record what I completed or started. ‘Sent out email to subscribers,’ or, ‘recorded interview with guest artist,’ or, ‘designed cover for new eBook.’ I may think I didn’t get anything done last week, but if I just take a look at the steps I took, the chapters I wrote, the podcasts I recorded and published – suddenly I know I’ve accomplished a lot. When we do this for an extended period of time, we may be the ones asking ourselves, ‘How do you manage to get so much done!’

For my own spreadsheet I’ve included vacations, too. Rest and play are essential in the dream of life. And seeing them listed means I actually rested, and played, and took delight in it instead of thinking I ought to be working at something. Those somethings are there as proof that we did, indeed, put our noses to the grindstone. And while we’re at it … let’s drop the grindstone image! Dreamshaping is, at its essence, about dreaming, and about inhabiting those dreams with our presence.

Start keeping a Project Worksheet today. In no time at all, you’ll wonder how you ever managed to accomplish so much.