The 10x Rule

Day 173 / 365

All my colleagues and friends would definitely say one thing about me, that it would be rare to find me without my headphones on. I admit that it’s a vice of mine, I always have to be listening to something, whether it’s songs or podcasts or pointless radio shows.

So in order to get some good out of this bad habit, I have started listening to audiobooks instead. And this blog post is about the one I’m listening to right now — The 10X Rule.

The 10X Rule is not your ordinary self-help book about how to be successful. While most people would tell you to start slow, keep your goals reasonable and achievable, this book takes a different route. It says that we are getting too lenient while setting our goals. To actually be successful we need to start thinking big, to think 10X.

The logic behind is straightforward. People would generally set a lesser that optimal goal, one which they think is just under their reach. On top of that, because they think that the goal is small, they will underestimate the effort needed to achieve their goals, and the amount of effort they actually end up putting would be even lesser.

Eventually, they realize they’ll come short of this lesser goal as well. And how do they respond to it? by bringing down the goal once again. When people feel they might not reach their targets, instead of increasing their efforts, they decrease the target.

But what happens if you think big? If you set a bigger goal, you will know it requires larger effort, and so you will be motivated to work harder than normal. And of course, you might come short of this big goal as well. But think of it this way, would you rather fail on a smaller goal and do miserably, or fail on a larger goal and still end up pretty good.

To summarize this in a single quote —

Always shoot for the moon, so that even if you miss, you would still be within the stars!

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — Lifestyle Creep