So much ink has been spilled on this very issue. So many trees have died. So many pixels have been lit up over this. And yet, I, Khatzumoto, the weirdest man on the Internet, claim to have something new to say about this?

Actually, yes.

If you read Hideto TOMABECHI (or anyone of that ilk), he’ll tell you to set crazy-big goals. BHAGs. Big, hairy, audacious goals. He’ll tell you to go completely outside your comfort zone. He’ll tell you to go nuts. Go wild, baby!

Meanwhile, your average, mainstream personal development / business book will be all about the SMART goals — specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely.

Both of these strategies are WRONG. Both will leave you sad, hollow and achievementless. They are very badly wrong. And they are the worst kind of wrong precisely because they seem right.

On the one hand, BHAGs are a great way to overwhelm yourself with unachievable dreams.

SMART goals, on the other hand, essentially advise you sit down, shut up, and keep things more or less as they are; maintain the status quo because it’s all you’re ever gonna amount to; be “realistic”, as many a well-intentioned adult (teachers, parents, etc.) is fond of telling the younglings. SMART goals essentially give you a gun and tell you to go be your own dreamkiller. And the results are Columbinesquely grim.

So, what’s the solution? How can you achieve great things easily and enjoyably?

Easy.

1. Do set ridiculously grand goals, but
2. Only set ridiculously small TASKS, and then
3. Do these nanotasks (or picotasks or femtotasks or yoctotasks or whichever SI prefix most tickles your fancy). Tinkering, tweaking and screwing around as you go along, until you
4. Reach your grand goal without really even realizing it — the best kind of anticlimax. You’re so immersed in your microtasks that there is no “reaching” to do. The “final straw” is just that — one strand in a haystack; it’s just the next natural step.

For your goals, don’t bother with a deadline. They should be too big and scary for you to set a deadline. Anything you understand well enough to set a deadline on isn’t big enough to be a “true” goal. The only deadline you need is “until”, or “in this lifetime” or “in 5-10 years”. That’s how big your goals should be.

For your tasks — the salami-slice-steps, the micro-motions towards a goal — go ridiculously easy. Think of it as a Talebian barbell strategy. You work both of the extremes: goals so big you’re embarrassed to say them out loud, and tasks so small you wonder whether they count (and, perhaps, are even embarrassed to be counting them). Your picotasks should be easy enough for an able-bodied toddler to do — you’re a baby, remember?

Here are some examples:

GOAL: Become so good at Japanese that people think you are Japanese
TASK: Turn on Japanese TV now.

GOAL: Become so good at Japanese that people think you are Japanese
TASK: Open up a Japanese YouTube video

GOAL: Paint picture
TASK: Color one pixel

This way will work. Not that it’ll make you or your life perfect, but it will make it better, and that’s the point. The point of perfection may well be our uber-goal (the goal of all goals), but the trendline of improvement (kaizen) is our actual path, our actual life. We don’t touch perfection, we merely approach it asymptotically, fearlessly and funly! 😀