With the coming of the year, I spent some time reflecting on how to live a great life. I reached some obvious conclusions, such as the need to take risks, embrace failure, and build a network of like-minded people. However, I also reached ideas which go against common advice. Setting unreasonable goals is the most counterintuitive one, hence the most worthy of sharing.
Consensus tells us that we should set reasonably achievable goals. They should be difficult to complete and should take us out of our comfort zone in some way, but nonetheless, they should be reasonable.
For example, let's take the goal “I will accelerate my promotion one year”. This goal is ambitious and will force you to work extremely hard to achieve it. However, if you work very hard, network with senior colleagues, and make work a priority, there is a high chance you will accomplish it. By taking incremental steps, being consistent, and improving the quality of your output, you will be able to reach most reasonable goals. And that is great news. However, this will not result in life-changing outcomes, nor will it lead you to change the nature of what you do to achieve success.
Let’s now look at the goal of “I will make $1,000,000 within one year”. Assuming you are parting from a standard position, this goal seems unreasonable. You could tick all the boxes required to achieve reasonable goals, yet you would still fail to accomplish such an unreasonable feat. Most people would automatically label such aspect as negative and would go back to argue why reasonable goals are better. However, this is exactly what makes unreasonable goals great. It forces you to take new, completely different actions.
Let me explain. To have any chance of achieving unreasonable goals, you will have to do things that scale. Starting a business, an entertainment channel, an investment account. Whatever. But by setting goals that are unreasonable given your current situation, you will be forced to radically change such a situation to place yourself on a path to achieve the goal. And that is what really matters, because, regardless of your goal, or what you do to achieve it, you will have set yourself up on a path in which achieving unreasonably ambitious goals is a possibility, and no longer an illusion.