Big Goals, Small Goals: What The Hell’s The Difference?

Believe it or not, the size of your goals play a whole heck of a lot with how you approach accomplishing them.  However size, the amount of believability, or even remotely realistic sounding you make your goals, it will DIRECTLY EFFECT how much effort, time, and planning into achieving them.

What if you had the choice of writing down these two vacations for the end of the year: a 16-day long Transatlantic cruise that stops along multiple beautiful classic Mediterranean towns, stops at the pink-sand beaches of Bermuda, and finally ends at the base of seemingly endless skyscrapers in New York City, OR you could choose to take Friday off of work (I hope the boss doesn’t kill you) to spend an “extended” weekend roadtrip to San Francisco (barring you live anywhere near).  There, you’ll choose to see the city sights, go to a nice dinner, and then, sooner than you know it, you’ll be back on the road headed home.

I don’t know about you, but the sound of an all-you-can-eat cruise with shows, a casino, awesome sites, and pools is too good– I’m sold.

Now just take a moment to see the differences between these two goals.  These options don’t need to be ones you’d like to have, but you should clearly see the difference in the amount of planning, time, and effort it would take to achieve going on that Transatlantic cruise.

And that’s the main difference!!

See, there are two types of goals: believable and unbelievable, or big and small, or simple and difficult–I think you get the picture.  These differences will directly correlate to the effort you’ll spend trying to make them become a reality.

If you choose to write down simple and easily achievable goals, chances are you’ll be able to check them off your list, but you would need to scrap and fight to do it.  The small and easily achievable goals are almost POINTLESS in planning because once you head that direction, you do so at a mediocre pace.  Simple goals are almost immediately attainable and just don’t have any meat on the bone.  In short, they just don’t cut it.

The big and “unbelievable” goals contain a story within them, something that took a great number of steps and processes to reach the finish.  You could even classify these big goals as being a 300-page novel; On the other hand, easily attainable goals could be a short story you read yourself in bed at night–they could be fun, but they never present a real struggle.

The bigger and more unrealistic the goal may seem, the more it will drive you to succeed once you start heading that direction.  Because these larger goals are so far away, you will need to perform your due diligence to plan out your action steps that will be needed as incremental successes towards your ending target.

Now if this were me, I’d fight to the end to achieve my Transatlantic cruise goal!  If there are failures along the way, just keep your eye on the prize and think back to all of the planning time you’ve already spent to get you to your target.  Don’t let ANYONE stand in between you and your goals!