goals should be lofty

welcome to introspection ft. harsehaj! ⭐️ i’m harsehaj, a 19 y/o always up to something in social good x tech.

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btw, feel free to reply with topic ideas you want me to write about for future posts.

onto today’s topic: goals should be lofty 🚀 

you should never set a goal that you’re sure you’ll achieve. it’s not much of a goal if you’re not pushing yourself and going the extra mile to see it through. 

if a goal is essentially a guarantee, that’s just a to-do item. a checkbox. a goal should push you out of your comfort zone in some way, whether it’s building a new habit, cold emailing x amount of cool people, or shipping a new feature of an app idea. it shouldn’t be something to easily incorporate into your day to day — goals merit effort. 💪 

if the goal seems easily attainable, make it loftier. 

this was one of the biggest lessons i learned from my first ever internship at a startup: to always set ambitious goals. we would track goals meticulously and dialogues like: “aiming for 20 user interviews this week? sounds doable, let’s make that 50,” were commonplace. it steered us away from complacency and lit our desire to keep achieving greater things. this tendency to boost my goals to the next level has stuck with me since.

goals are a form of motivation. the higher we aspire to climb, the less chances there are for stagnancy.

of course, there still should be an element of realism in goal-setting so that you can actually make progress and receive that gratification when you achieve it, but the path there shouldn’t be easy. if you’ve never run a mile in your life, don’t make your next immediate goal to run a half marathon — start off with that difficult 1 mile and work your way up to that larger goal. 🏃‍♀️ 

i’m a firm believer of mega lofty goals with bite-sized lofty goals nested within them. challenging ourself brings a true sense of accomplishment. after all, there is beauty in the struggle.

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