How does goal setting look like on the Olympic level? Do world champion athletes do things differently? I’d been reading Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss, and the chapter with Olympic medalist snowboarder Shaun White made me sit up: 

“Every single season I’d set a goal… it’s usually two goals. It’s something very serious and something funny, something stupid. One of them was to win the Olympics, and then one of them was to see how many cars I could win [context: car companies were giving away cars a lot for snowboarding competitions]. They’re always random, man…. But that’s what’s fun, as it takes a lot of the pressure off. Winning the Olympics is a very big goal, it’s a very stressful goal to have. So it’s nice to have something else to offset it.” - Shaun White

I love it. So this is what sets Olympic level athletes apart. We all set goals. We were all taught that having one big goal is ambitious enough. One goal means focus. But when you have a goal as ambitious as winning gold at the Olympics, one goal becomes a singular point of stress that can implode on you. Shaun White pairs that singular goal with a playful, random one, to take the edge of the original. To make the goal pairing work, I believe you still need to kind of take the playful goal ‘seriously’ enough, i.e. you got to track it, play around and have fun with it, want it. 

This is why I love learning from the extremes, instead of the average middle. If we imagine everyone plotted out on a bell curve, it is the ones at either end who often have unusual work-arounds or techniques for managing their respective extreme situations. Their methods would interestingly, also be beneficial for us average folks. In fact, these methods would often be 10x more productive and effective. 

I love this goal pairing technique, because I have a big goal myself coming up - making a million dollars. It’s a crazy, ambitious goal, at least for me. How do I even do it? This goal pairing technique therefore came at the opportune moment - I can have the $1mil goal, but I can also pair it with a fun/funny/stupid/playful/random goal to offset the stress off a bit. 

So what fun/funny/stupid/playful/random goal can I set, alongside the $1mil goal?

• The number of coffees I drank on the way to $1mil
• The number of stupid ideas I tried and failed
• The number of times people told me it’s a stupid idea
• The number of time I said “no”

They don’t feel stupid or fun enough to be honest! I need even stupider and funnier ones!