Week 391 (brendan@brendanbarca.com)

Here's your weekly dose of Fuel Your Mind Friday where I share business building ideas, lifestyle design hacks, and inspirational content to help you thrive in your work and find purpose in your life.

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PSA: My wife, Pema Sherpa, and I have another blog called The Mindful Minute! Check it out.

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HOW TO INCREASE THE VELOCITY TOWARDS YOUR BIG GOALS

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The speed at which we move towards a goal tends to be based on the speed at which we give ourselves permission to move. If we see it as easy or short-term we sprint towards it. If we view our goal as big or longterm, we move slowly. Let's say we decide we want to be a CMO someday, or a senior engineer, or a writer, or a small business owner. We make this our "10-year plan" and we mosey along accordingly. Each year we might make mini shifts or, worse, we might push our plan off for a few years. It's so big that we move with caution or we freeze up completely.

But let's say you find yourself in the jungle and suddenly there's a tiger chasing after you, would you continue to mosey along or would you sprint as fast as your body could handle? We wouldn't stop and negotiate with the tiger and ask him for more time as we so often negotiate extensions and delays with ourselves. Our speed, towards any goal, is based on one thing—our own velocity.

To help us create more velocity and urgency in reaching our big goals, Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, offers us a helpful re-frame. To paraphrase, we take our 10-year plan and ask ourselves, why can't we do this in 6-months? This question might make us feel uncomfortable. Or we might scream in protest — my goal can't be done in 6-months! But that's the point. The question is meant to stretch our thinking, to challenge how we're going about the problem. The question puts that tiger on your tail.

This weekend, take some time to sit back and think through your own 10-year plan — to get your PhD, to become CEO, to focus full time on your artwork, to retire — and ask yourself the Peter Thiel question: Why can't you do this in 6-months? Or a more helpful question might be: If you had to do this in 6-months what would you need to do to get it done?

Write down everything that comes to mind from this brainstorm. Don't focus on whether it's possible or not. Focus on coming up with a plan for how to get it done if it was in fact possible to do it in the allotted time — again, pretend that tiger is chasing you. Then, map out the weeks and months ahead. How can you pick up your velocity? How can you cut that 10-year goal down to the shortest time possible?

Even if, in the end, you can't reach your goal in 6-months, the exercise will help you map out the fastest route possible and give you the steps to achieving it with a new, accelerated plan.

You don't have to mosey along towards your big goals. You can get there faster if you update your thinking and increase your velocity. Take your 10-year plan and see if you can get there in 6-months. What's the worst that can happen? You get there in 5-years? Still a win.

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Thanks for subscribing,

- Brendan

​Let's connect on LinkedIn!

​brendanbarca.com​

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