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In the 1942 State of the Union address, President Roosevelt laid out astonishing industrial production goals to support the recent U.S. entry into World War II. Besides merry-go round factories turning out gun mounts, and corset factories producing grenade belts, ship-building went from a year-long artform to a 60-day mass production activity.
The enormous efforts for speeding up ship production time that resulted from FDR’s audacious goal-setting may ultimately have prevented the Allies losing the war. Because ships, even though they were rushed and imperfect, were the only way for munitions and food to get to the overcome Allies across the Atlantic.
That is the power of rather insane goal-setting.
It’s hard to compare to the activities of a world war, but I couldn’t help being encouraged by that story when thinking of my own overly ambitious goals. It reminds me why we should all be making big, audacious goals more often.
In March I decided to learn Spanish. My goal was to achieve conversational fluency and read Don Quixote in its native Spanish by my next birthday – which happens to be on Saturday. That gave me about five months to go from knowing my numbers and colors to chatting it up in Spanish and reading challenging literature.
So did I achieve it?
Nope.
But that’s okay.
As a result of this ambitious big goal, I can now read Spanish fairly well, including finishing about half of an 800-page novel in Spanish (helped by the fact that I read it a few years ago in English, so I know the plot points). I’m flipping through Don Quixote and can get somewhat the gist of it, but it is indeed a behemoth piece of literature.
Conversation en Español still eludes me due to speed (my lack of it, in both listening and stringing together words), but I now have a much better understanding of what it will take to get me there.
The trick with setting big, audacious goals is to acknowledge the progress you make towards them, not necessarily judge yourself with a black and white lens.
To take advantage of the energy and momentum created by setting lofty goals for your finances, you could decide to pay off your mortgage in 10 years or build your savings to a certain amount in 3 years. Whatever would be BIG for you.
With a big scary goal set, you’re going to naturally start hustling for what kind of game plan could actually get you there.
What would it take? How many things would have to happen to make that a reality?
Then you get to work.
And in that effort, you’ll discover new ideas to generate progress and unlock new momentum. You’ll push yourself to a new level that you couldn’t foresee before. And you’ll be proving to yourself what can be done, that you didn’t realize before.
And that, in my opinion, is the goal of setting big goals.
“he problem with smart people is they can come up with a good reason for not doing anything. They are smart enough to find the cracks, to foresee the challenges, and to talk themselves out of the idea. They are experts at justifying their lack of courage or lack of action with an intelligent excuse.
But there will always be reasons to not do something, and this is particularly true of anything worth doing. We value those moments in which we overcame challenge, not those in which we avoided it. Ultimately, action is a choice. The choice to emphasize the reasons for doing it despite the reasons you have for avoiding it.
James Clear
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Under 2, an email series designed to share quick bites of wisdom to empower your financial journey (while keeping it short). Be sure to sign-up below to get these messages in your inbox.
All for now,
Lindsey