At the centre of the 10X Rule is the strategy of setting ridiculously ambitious goals. Regular goal-setting is for chumps. In classic goal-setting, you make the kind of goals you hope you can reach, yet routinely under-estimate your actual abilities. Instead, Cardone wants you to write down your goals every day, making sure they are 10 times bigger than what you think is reasonable.
Personal Insight: I was sceptical at first. The idea of multiplying my goals by 10 seemed like a joke. But when I started writing down these crazy goals, I started to believe in them. That was the first step to making them happen.
Steps to Writing Your Goals
- Don’t Downsize Your Outcomes: When you write down your goals, avoid making them appear easier by downsizing them. Keep them big and audacious.
- Forget the How for Now: Don’t get bogged down in the questions of how you’ll achieve your goal. Start by zeroing in on what you want to accomplish and leave the how out of it.
- Act Now: ‘Decide which ones are most important for you to move toward today, and ask yourself: “What’s the first step I can take towards this goal today?” What are the next steps toward this?’ (Okay, now go ahead and do them, too.) Don’t let ‘the other’ distract you from the work you can do in that moment towards your goal. Try this guide and let us know how it felt. You might find yourself energised and able to tackle your goal. On the other hand, if you’re haunted by little grips of shame or guilt after implementing the exercise, that’s a sign that more work is needed. Shame or guilt are simply a part of the healing or self-improvement process; you don’t need to feel ashamed to become a better person.
Ignoring Small Details
It’s the dwelling on the details too long, the micro-planning at the expense of decisive action. Cardone suggests making a list of discrete actions that will take you toward your goals and ‘just start doing them. Leave the details for another time. Figuring them out along the way is ideal. Momentum is what matters.’
Personal insight: I have seen this in my life, specifically in relation to my blogging. For a long time, I thought you had to have a plan before action, but I came to realise that the plan often emerges by virtue of movement; when I started my blog, the inspiration had struck and I didn’t have any clue beyond that. But I leapt nonetheless, and the path emerged from those actions.
For Immediate Action
- Gathers momentum: Speed builds momentum: as soon as you take quick little steps, it’s easier to keep moving forward toward your objective.
- Kills Fear: Rushing acts directly against the fear of failure. When you rush, you have less time to worry about the worst possible outcome.
- Learn as you Go: Sometimes it’s better to try something out than to think things through first. When you jump in, you pick up information you would not have gained through
Against Immediate Action
- Risk of errors: Rushing into action in a hurry, you might make mistakes that proper planning would have saved you from.
- Potential for Burnout: There’s a danger of over-exertion, which could bring on burnout, if the assignments aren’t strategic.
- Resource Misallocation: In the absence of a plan, you run the risk of misallocating resources, which lowers efficiency.
My Take on Immediate Action
Although I agree with both sides of the argument, I feel that there is usually more good in taking action right away than bad, because in my experience action is a source of opportunity: over the time that I was working, I found that the times I leapt into projects, I ran into more opportunity. Sometimes you crash and burn but those are opportunities to learn.
Reviewing and Revising Goals
Cardone instructs: ‘Go over that list of goals every single day.’ Now we’re talking lifestyle – an activity you do daily, not simply once. ‘Keeping your big goals right in front of you and your face at all times will keep you focused and on-point.’
Personal response: Revising goals daily seems to help see things more clearly. When engaging in the day-to-day, it is easy to feel disconnected. I stay grounded and organised by constantly referring to your larger goals.
How to Get Started?
Getting Started with 10X does not involve small, cautious steps – it involves jumping right in and tackling big, huge goals with immediate, massive action. The chapter dispels the myth that planning and perfection are the precursor to success. They are not. Momentum, boldness and know-how are.
And if you are ready to transform your life, then do not wait … write down your Big Hairy Audacious Goals [10X goals] now, get rid of the small stuff and get busy immediately. When you review them daily and do whatever it takes to bring them about, your 10X goals will very soon become your reality, and your life, and the world around you, will never be the same.
Last Thought: Experience itself has no substitute. As they say, you have to be part of the ride to know it; and the most exhilarating the ride will be the very ones that take you down the 10X journey. Act your way to success and don’t you ever be afraid to rock the world.
