Goals and Adult Adenture Deficit Disorder (Book Excerpts)

Book: 4 Hour Work Week
Author: Tim Ferriss
Chapter 4: pgs 50-53

Doing the Unrealistic is Easier Than Doing the Realistic:

From contacting billionaires to rubbing elbows with celebrities—the
second group of students did both—its easy as believing it can be done.
It's lonely at the top. Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are
convinced that they are incapable of achieving great things, so they
aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for
“realistic” goals, paradoxically making them the most time-and
energy-consuming. It is easier to raise $10 million dollars than it is
$1 million. It is easier to pick up the one perfect 10 at the bar than
the five 8s. If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is,
too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself.
You are better than you think. Unreasonable and unrealistic goals are
easier to achieve for yet another reason. Having an unusually large
goal is an adrenaline infusion that provides the endurance to overcome
the inevitable trials and tribulations that go along with any goal.
Realistic goals, goals restricted to the average ambition level, are
uninspiring and will only fuel you through the first or second problem,
at which point you throw in the towel. If the potential payoff is
mediocre or average, so is your effort. I'll run through walls to get a
catamaran trip though the Greek islands, but I might not change my
brand of cereal for a weekend trip through Columbus, Ohio. If I choose
the latter because it is “realistic,” I won't have the enthusiasm to
jump even the smallest hurdle to accomplish it. With beautiful,
crystal-clear Greek waters and delicious wine on the brain, I'm
prepared to do battle for a dream that is worth dreaming. Even though
their difficulty of achievement on a scale of 1-10 appears to be a 10
and a 2 respectively, Columbus is more likely to fall through. The
fishing is best where the fewest go, and the collective insecurity of
the world makes it easy for people to hit home runs while everyone else
is aiming for base hits. There is just less competition for bigger
goals. Doing big things begins with asking for them properly.

What Do You Want? A Better Question, First of All:

Most people will never know what they want. I don't know what I want.
If you ask me what I want to do in the next five months for language
learning, on the other hand, I do know. It's a matter of specificity.
“What do you want?” Is too imprecise to produce a meaningful and
actionable answer. Forget about it. “What are your goals?” is similarly
fated for confusion and guesswork. To rephrase the question, we need to
take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Let's assume we have
10 goals and we achieve them—what is the desired outcome that makes all
the effort worthwhile? The most common response is what I also would
have suggested five years ago: happiness. I no longer believe this is a
good answer. Happiness can be bought with a bottle of wine and has
become ambiguous through overuse. There is a more precise alternative
that reflects what I believe the actual objective is. Bear with me.
What is the opposite of happiness? Sadness? No. Just as love and hate
are two sides of the same coin, so are happiness and sadness. Crying
out of happiness is a perfect illustration of this. The opposite of
love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is—here's the
clincher—boredom. Excitement is the more practical synonym for
happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is
the cure-all. When people suggest that your follow your “passion” or
your “bliss,” I propose that they are, in fact, referring to the same
singular concept: excitement. This brings us full circle. The question
you should be asking isn't, “What do I want?” or “What are my goals?”
but “What would excite me?”

Adult Onset ADD: Adventure Deficit Disorder:

Somewhere between college graduation and your second job, a chorus
enters your internal dialogue: Be realistic and stop pretending. Life
isn't like the movies. If you're five years old and say you want to be
an astronaut, your parents tell you that you can be anything you want
to be. It's harmless, like telling a child that Santa Claus exists. If
you're 25 and announce you want to start a new circus, the response is
different: Be realistic; become a lawyer or an accountant or a doctor,
have babies, and raise them to repeat the cycle. If you do manage to
ignore the doubters and start your own business for, example, ADD
doesn't disappear. It just takes a different form. When I started
BrainQUICKEN LLC in 2001, it was with a clear goal in mind: Make $1000
per day whether I was banging my head on a laptop computer or cutting
my toenails on the beach. It was to be an automated source of cash
flow. If you look at my chronology, it is obvious that this didn't
happen until a meltdown forced it, despite the requisite income. Why?
The goal wasn't specific enough. I hadn't defined alternate activities
that would replace the initial workload. Therefore, I just continued
working, even though there was no financial need. I needed to feel
productive and had no other vehicles. This is how most people work
until death: “I'll just work until I have X dollars and then do what I
want.” If you don't define the “what I want” alternative activities,
the X-figure will increase indefinitely to avoid the fear-inducing
uncertainty of this void. This is when both employees and entrepreneurs
become fat men in red BMWs.

The Fat Man in the Red BMW Convertible:

There have been several points in my life—among them, just before I was
fired from TrueSAN and just before I escaped the United States to avoid
taking an Uzi into Mcdonald's—at which I saw my future as another fat
man in a mid-life-crisis BMW. I simply looked at those who were 15-20
years ahead of me on the same track, whether a director of sales or an
entrepreneur in the same industry, and it scared the hell out of me. It
was such an acute phobia, and such a perfect metaphor for the sum of
all fears, that it became a pattern-interrupt between myself and fellow
lifestyle designer and entrepreneur Douglas Price. Doug and I traveled
parallel paths for nearly five years, facing the same challenges and
self-doubt and thus keeping a close psychological eye on each other.
Our down periods seem to alternate, making us a good team. Whenever one
of us began to set our sights lower, lose faith, or “accept reality,”
the other would chime in via phone or e-mail like an AA sponsor: “Dude,
are you turning into a bald fat man in the red BMW convertible?” The
prospect was terrifying enough that we always got our asses and
priorities back on track immediately. The worst that could happen
wasn't crashing and burning, it was accepting terminal boredom as a
tolerable status quo. Remember—boredom is the enemy, not some abstract
“failure.”

**Get the Book to Read on, or check out Tim's Blog at http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/***

Posted Červenec 13th, 2008 by Samuel Berg