50 pages into The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris, here’s what has stuck out
I’m a little more than 50 pages into one of Tim Ferris’ most successful books, and one thing has stuck out above everything else.
He says that people should have lofty goals for two reasons. We’ll get to those reasons in a little bit.
He says that too many people don’t succeed at something not because the goals are too large, but because they are not big enough. This didn’t make sense to me at first.
After all, shouldn’t lower goals be easier to achieve? They are considered easier for a reason. Then I read the rest of the page and realized why this is not the case.
Without further ado, let’s get into the reasoning.
The first is that there is less competition to face when aiming higher. Most people are of the mindset that lofty goals are too difficult to obtain. They view them more like a dream than as something achievable.
Because of this, people don’t even try. They opt to have excuses instead. They rationalize why they don’t put in any effort. The reasons are logically sound, but you won’t succeed unless you try.
People view themselves at a certain level. If you believe that you can only make $50,000 a year, that’s what you’ll make. It may sound like the usual motivational crap, but here’s the logic behind it.
Belief comes first, then action. Whatever you believe is what you take action on. If you believe you’re only capable of making 50k a year, then you will take action to make 50k a year.
If you believe that you can make a million dollars a year, you will try more and do more to make that amount of money.
Mindset is the foundation of success.
Tim Ferris notes in his book an experiment that he did as a professor. He told his students that if they could get in contact with a celebrity or other high-value person, he would pay for a round trip ticket to any place in the world.
The person could be a professional athlete, musician, CEO of a large company, or the president. Anybody who would be considered tough to get in contact with counted.
The students needed to ask them a question. If they got an answer, they would win the prize. Whoever came up with the most creative way of doing it would win the prize.
Ferris goes on to say that zero people completed his challenge. Were they ignored? did these high-value people tell the students to piss off?
No.
No one even tried. They instead came up with excuses like they had no time, had a paper to do instead, and anything else they could think of.
And this was a class of very intelligent people. It was at Princeton, and many of the students carried a high GPA. Surely they could have thought of ways to accomplish the task. Instead, they did nothing.
This experiment speaks to the power of mindest.
It goes back to show that people won’t even attempt what they deem to be a difficult goal. Use this to your advantage and go for what other people refuse to.
The second reason Ferris mentioned was that you will be more inclined to put in effort for a hard task than an easy one. You know it’ll be a difficult goal to achieve, so you’ll need to put in more effort.
You’ll put in the effort because the achievement at the end of the journey will be worth it. People will work more for 100 dollars than 10 dollars.
When we aim for easier goals, we don’t put in as much effort. We know that accomplishing the goal won’t mean much. It might be a little bit of a reward, but it won’t be life-changing.
Because of this, we are more likely to quit on the smaller goals than the bigger ones. Do you want to make your efforts count? Aim high.
People will judge you and talk about you should you choose to aim higher. You can ignore this or simply not tell anyone.
For example, I still haven’t told anyone of my goal of posting every day for the whole year. I know people will ask me why I’m doing it since it won’t lead to anything, or tell me I’m not a writer and give me endless reasons as to why it doesn’t make sense.
Instead of telling people and using negativity as motivation, I chose not to tell anyone. I’d rather just work in silence and not deal with it.
You may be different. You may want to feed off the negative energy. There is no right or wrong answer. Just remember to keep going in pursuit of achievement.
Good luck with your goals and stay positive.
