Dreams are cheap.

You start life doing what other people tell you to do: finishing your homework, doing the dishes, making your bed. Older you checks tasks off a to-do list. And it feels good (unless you keep pushing overdue tasks down the calendar). At some point, you start to question your tasks, "what are all these things I'm doing building towards?"

Human desires are largely similar: being comfortable, spending more time with loved ones, doing fulfilling activities etc. This is your vision. The details are flexible, but you kind of know what you'd want out of life.

So the question is: what tasks will lead you to your vision?

Between your vision and your tasks lurks the messy middle. Doing tasks in a way that build towards your vision requires planning. There are other words for this: strategy, goal-setting, roadmapping etc. And this is difficult, because getting it wrong and failing along the way can discourage and derail you from building towards your vision.

The messy middle also makes it unclear on which task to start with. Sometimes, you just have to pick up a knot and start untangling it. The unraveled thread might not go anywhere, but the mess becomes a tiny bit clearer. Keep picking at it.

Checking off tasks takes time and effort. Setting a vision is much easier, because dreaming is free. But the biggest impact you can make in your life is to chart a course between your daily work and your dreams.

Also, you can make a lot of money if you're good at untangling other people's messy middles.

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Half-baked thought:

Design sets the vision, guiding decisions towards the ideal.

Engineers solve problems. Tasks have a beginning and an end with a defined output.

Product Management, bridging vision and execution, is the messy middle.