Built to Last author Jim Collins popularized the term “big, hairy, audacious goal,” a huge, daunting challenge that focuses, energizes, and motivates people to accomplish more than they thought possible.
Sounds great in theory, but not always in practice. In a group setting, setting an seemingly impossible goal can pay dividends, like the time Steve Jobs persuaded Corning’s Wendell Weeks to manufacture enough gorilla glass to produce millions of iPhones in less than six months.
But without a team you can rely on, that can support you, that will pick you up when you’re down – a situation most startup founders can relate to – a huge goal can actually be demotivating. The distance between here, where you’re starting, and there, where you want to end up?
Still, even if your goal is important, meaningful, or worthwhile, just thinking about how far you have left to go is stressful.
Which means at the very least you’re unlikely to perform at your best, which will further slow your progress – and make it much more likely that you’ll quit. Thinking back, every time I decided to give up on a huge goal came down to stress and despair: stress because the goal was too big, despair because I wasn’t making progress.
That feeling has psychological, and even neurological, underpinnings. Good Stress, Bad Stress
The Yerkes-Dodson law describes the relationship between arousal (not that kind of arousal) and performance. Your performance suffers if you’re too relaxed, or if the stakes are too low. On the flip side, your performance also suffers if you’re too fired up, or the stakes are too high.
In visual terms, like this from Wikipedia:
The peak of the bell shape is where you want to be: engaged enough to be focused and energized, but not so much that you’re like a squirrel physically (and mentally) freaking out because winter is coming.
Because when that happens, stress hormones also get involved. Feel too stressed – too “aroused” – and higher levels of adrenaline and especially cortisol negatively impact performance by causing muscle tension, impairing cognitive function, decreasing focus, hindering coordination, and disrupting sleep.
Add all that up, and yeah, you’re more likely to give up when, despite your “best” effort, you don’t feel like you’re getting closer to the peak of a mountain you can’t even see from where you are.
What can you do if you want to chase a huge goal? If you’re trying to achieve a huge goal – especially if you’re trying to achieve a huge goal – the key is to stay in a Yerkes-Dodson law peak as often as you can.
The best way to do that is to keep your world small. The Best Stress
As I’ve written about before, when Andy Stumpf became a Navy SEAL instructor he often asked candidates why they quit. For many, becoming a SEAL was a lifelong goal. So why would they give up?
“Time and time again,” Stumpf told Joe Rogan, “the answer I got from students was they got overwhelmed. They were doing the opposite of keeping their world small.”
Some trainees thought “big.” They saw SEAL training as a 180-day program, and by extension saw Hell Week as a five-day ordeal. Others thought small. When Stumpf went through SEAL training, he thought in terms of his next meal:
They have to feed you every six hours. So if I can stack six hours on six hours on six hours, and just focus on getting to the next meal, it doesn’t make matter how much I’m in pain, doesn’t matter how cold I am.
If I can just get to the next meal, get a mental reprieve and mental reset, then I can go on.
If you can apply that resilience to setting and approaching your goals from digestible perspectives, you can accomplish an insane amount.
That approach is the Yerkes-Dodson law in practice. Getting to the end of the week, or of the next six months? That’s too big, too hairy, too audacious and daunting. That’s “impaired performance because of strong anxiety.” In emotional intelligence terms, that’s letting your emotions work against you, not for you. Emotional Intelligence Tips
Getting to your next meal? That’s a goal you can embrace. That’s a goal you can accomplish. That’s a goal that keeps stress hormones better under control.
That’s a goal sufficient to get you going. But not so big that it gets you gone.
Instead of seeing a huge goal in its entirety, break it down into a series of tasks. Instead of seeing a project as a project, see it as a series of small steps.
Say you want to start a business. Consider the task list in its entirety, and the journey seems endlesss. The stress, and your emotions, will quickly get the best of you.
But you can do whatever is next. You can set up a basic accounting system. You can ask a few people for feedback on your concept or prototype. You can work on your pitch deck. You can work on your sales demo.
You can’t do everything, but you can do whatever is next – and when you see the process that way, you’re much more likely to find yourself riding the crest of the Yerkes-Dodson law.
Since you can’t accomplish everything at once, why think about everything at once? Instead, keep your world small. Break the task down into chunks that aren’t so small, or simple, or easy that you don’t have to try. But not so big that the effort seems too great.
Most pursuits, no matter how challenging, ultimately come down to time and effort. Put in the effort over a long enough period of time, and you can accomplish almost anything.
But that first means you have to do everything possible to ensure your emotions don’t get the best of you. Otherwise you’ll get frustrated, or stress, or feel demoralized, and you’ll want to give up. And you don’t want that.