The psychologist Adam Mastroianni likes to ask people what they’d do if they could do anything. A lot of them say: “I’d really love to run a little coffee shop.”
So he asks a follow-up: “How would you pick the coffee beans?” And then: “How much does a La Marzocco espresso machine cost?”
His point: “if you can’t answer those questions, if you don’t even find them interesting, then you should not open a coffee shop.” The dream is a cozy room with regulars, but the days are mostly suppliers, prices and equipment.
He calls this unpacking. You take the thing you want and list what you’d actually be doing all day.
For example: you’d love to write a book. Unpacked, that’s sitting alone most mornings for a year, rewriting the same chapters. Does that sound good to you?
It works the other way too. If there’s daily work most people find tedious and you’d happily do it, pay attention to that. And if you’re the one who wants to compare espresso machines, open the coffee shop!
