Everyone wants to achieve something unbelievable. Whether they admit it to themselves – or anyone else – is another matter. When it comes to unrealistic goals, there’s one stop gap between “boring, mundane activity” and everyone giving you high-fives. That middle ground is what I’m writing about today.
Here’s a little glimpse into my personal psychology. The picture below was – for nearly two years – my desktop background. This wolf caption greeted me every morning to tell me to forget laziness and achieve something.
I’m all for crazy experiments and setting unrealistic goals. If you seek to achieve just realistic things, then you’re going to possibly fail anyway, and because you’ve shot at an easy target, you’ll feel bad about missing.
Take the niche site challenge for example… I could have said, “I’m going to build one niche site this year.” Instead, I’m going to build twenty-eight. If I only build twenty, I’m not going to engage in self-flagellation. I’m going to congratulate myself on building twenty niche sites. If I had a goal of building one and I failed, then I might have to break out the whip.
That encapsulates why I like setting unrealistic goals.
There’s One Caveat Though… Do Something Easy
Yesterday, I wrote about the idea of a single conscious process being the key to success. That would seem at odds with what I’m writing in this article, and also at odds with other items from the treasure vault… like this article on unrealistic goals.
You can do both, and you must do both. That’s the caveat. If you’re going to do unreasonable or crazy things, then your goals need to be married to the small processes that will get you there.
If Your Project Is Too Big, Catch A Smaller Fish
Three years ago, long before I started copywriting, I had another online project. It was my first attempt at an authority site project. It failed.
The reason it failed wasn’t because I was lazy or boring. In fact, I wrote an article every single day for that site, just like I do this one. That authority site also had the same sort of theme as this one too; every day, I’d write what I was learning and my original observations.
And just like this site, the authority site in question got spread around in its niche and people found it organically because the insights – whilst not terribly well constructed and not exactly divinely inspired – were original additions to the niche. In other words, I was actually doing stuff as opposed to rehashing, “The five best movies about this subject” stuff.
So why did the project fail?
I had a massive goal in mind. I was going to build huge and comprehensive courses that would train people to learn various niche-related skills.
The problem with that was that a) I didn’t know the subject well enough, b) Or how to create an online course and, c) I didn’t know how to sell anything.
Spending a lot of time on a project with no return will mean that you lose motivation fast. This’ll lead to you dropping projects left, right and centre. (I have done this so many times with so many different things… it’s infuriating to say the least.)
What Would I Do Differently Now?
With the above project, I would keep the unrealistic goals – the big projects and $xxx courses – intact. Absolutely. Remember, if you’re not biting off more than you can chew, then you’re probably being boring. Being boring is the worst thing ever.
I would also keep writing daily. I would come up with original observations and make sure that anyone else blogging in the niche had to up their game to keep up with the volume and quality that I’d put out.
So what would I do differently? I’d catch a smaller fish.
With the above example, if I could go back to 2014 with my current skills and knowledge, I’d tell myself to put out a quick e-book or something. Just a $10 e-book with an overview of why I was doing what I was doing and how everyone else could do it too.
It wouldn’t have made me a millionaire, but I probably wouldn’t have quit. At the time of writing, my site was getting 800 views a month. If my book converted at 1%, then it’d have been making $80 a month. That probably would have been enough incentive for me to carry on, especially if I created a few other products and made some affiliate sales too.
…And Why You Should Never “Delete” A Project!
Incidentally… I wrote an article way back about how you shouldn’t ever give up on a project entirely and delete a website.
The site I’m talking about today is a perfect example why.
The last time I posted an article to that site was January 2015. The site still gets 500 visitors a month based on organic search traffic.
There isn’t a Twitter. There are no links coming in from Reddit. I didn’t use IFTTT to syndicate any of those posts. The theme looks dated. Essentially, nothing that I’ve learned since 2014 has been applied to this site. It sits there gaining traffic though, waiting for me to do something with it if I ever feel the need.
(As it so happens, throwing an e-book together and doing some reviews for the site will take me a weekend, so I’ll probably do this in the bleak midwinter when going outside isn’t an option.)
Final Thoughts
With anything you wish to accomplish, there’ll be two major aspects:
- The routine you have to get in to achieve the little goals
- The massive great goal and vision you have for the future.
However, in order to keep yourself motivated and progressing nicely, you have to slot something in between those two things. Call it a small fish, an easy victory or whatever else you want, but achieve it.
You can use gamification to turn a long-term goal into a set of short-term goals, but bear in mind that it’s an intermediary step.
Everyone who learns a language wants to be fluent in the language. They want to woo a lover or command the respect of foreign dignitaries. Nobody has the goal of stumbling like a mentally slow child through their first foreign conversation, but it’s an easy victory.