Q: What are you interested in that others would likely roll their eyes over? A: Have you heard of 10x thinking?
Putting it simply, 10x thinking is the belief that setting our goals ten times bigger can make them more likely to be achieved. A few times, achieving my big goals led to breakthroughs in my life. Did life seem more straightforward, then? I had more luck then. Or did I?
Let me convince you that 10x thinking is more than a belief. It’s an operating system. Well, not everyone likes that tech analogy. It’s a framework. I wonder if they will ever introduce this framework in school. Do we tell our family members and friends about it? Most likely, it will just simply fall on deaf ears. I want to master 10x thinking to have a more significant impact on those around me.
We are kept from our goal not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal. ― Robert Brault
First, for inspiration, I like quoting Robert Brault, who has many great quotes, and that’s the top-rated one. He’s not a coach. He has just been living a great life with observation.
There’s no single waking hour in which I don’t experience such a situation. It’s productive procrastination. I seem to be doing that by writing this post, unless… Unless writing is part of my bigger goal, and it is. It rings true most of the time when I reach for my phone, for a lesser goal of staying up to date with my messages or adding a to-do list item.
We can divide our life into three parts: the past, the present, and the future.
We think a lot about those black lines, forgetting that it’s all still in our hands,” ― Tim Urban @waitbutwhy
So it’s clear, so we should not waste time pondering the past. How worth it is it to spend time pondering the future?
We have a choice every day — to act on yesterday’s good intentions or get an early start on tomorrow’s regrets. ― Robert Brault
Can we design the future? 10x thinking is one way.
Does the past determine the present? Does the present determine the future? In some ways, yes, but it is as valid as no. Based on our decisions, there are infinite possible outcomes in life. A fixed mindset makes the set of outcomes too limited. Enter the growth mindset.
When we look back into the past, we rely on our memories or what we can recover from memory storage. That’s up to interpretation. Misinterpretation happens. Reinterpretation can be done. Imagine opening a Google Doc once in a while to read our journal and make some changes, except there is no version control.
Perception is a clash of mind and eye, the eye believing what it sees, the mind seeing what it believes. ― Robert Brault
So, with a growth mindset and plenty of time for reflection, we can probably come to terms with the idea that the present determines the past.
Does the future, then, determine the present? Does it depend on how far into the future we look? The answer is yes. Pick how far into your future and meet your future self of that future. Have a conversation with your future self.
The only way to make your present better is to make your future bigger. ― Dan Sullivan
Without considering your future self, your current self is just headed to your default future. It is probably not the future you want or hope for. It will probably happen naturally unless significant changes are made. How excited are you about this default future?
If you can get on a time machine, which future self do you want to meet? 1 year from now? 3 years? 10 years? at 90 years old?
You will not become your future self. At least not exactly. The imaginations and conversation with your Future Self help shape the person you become and help make that future self a reality.
For more than a century, the majority of research and theories held to the dogma that as people, we were the byproduct of our past. However, recent research in positive psychology and neuroscience is proving the opposite. It’s not the past that drives us, but rather, it is the future that pulls us. ― Benjamin Hardy on Inc
So, can you imagine your big, bold future? Can you envision a different identity for yourself?
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand. ― Albert Einstein
I find the 10x thinking framework powerful. 10x is not an outcome but a counterintuitive process that we can apply when we want a breakthrough in our lives. In the past five years, as part of my endurance training while running or cycling, I enjoyed listening to the following Audible books, which shaped the learning I shared in this post.
- Atomic Habits
- The 80/20 Principle
- 10x is easier than 2x
- The Gap and The Gain
- Be Your Future Self Now
I am only beginning to connect the dots. I hope this encourages one other person, in addition to myself, to explore a 10x growth over the next 10 years with 10x thinking. Did I just say 10 years? Well, I’ll explore on the 10-year mark another day.
