How To Achieve Your Most Ambitious Goals

Stephan Duneier

  Stephan Duneier in his ted talk explains how to reach your ambitious goals with marginal improvement decisions. He begins by talking about how to become a world-class artist. It is easier to replicate a grey square than to replicate a picture of Brad Pitt. He says that one can move from one square to many of them and create a picture. It is that simple. World-class artist Chuck Close draws his picture using the same technique.

What stands between us and achieving our ambitious dreams is not possessing extraordinary talents or skills rather how we handle our problems and make a decision to solve them. A marginal improvement in the process of decision making can make a huge impact on the result. Stop being a spectator of your decision making and be an active participant. As a student, Duneier had difficulty focusing on his studies for more than 10 minutes and always ended up being a ‘C’ grade student. He decided to change by a making marginal adjustment in the process of studying.  He broke down his assignments into manageable tasks that would only require his attention for 10 minutes. Then took a break and come back to the same or different assignment. This process helped him in college and in his professional life. 

Since it helped him in his professional life, he decided to apply it in his personal life as well. So, instead of listening to music on his way to work for 45 minutes on his i-pod, he decided to listen to the Pimsleur German Language program. After 10 months he finished the language program and now he can speak German. A marginal adjustment to his daily routine helped him to learn a new language. He later applied this to the goals he planned after his retirement. 

If you have a goal of reading 50 books in a year, start by putting down your phone, pick up a book, and read one word. When you read one word, you will read the next and on, thus finishes the task without even realizing it.

He learned yarn bombing which is wrapping structures in yarn in 82 days taking it step by step; one stitch at a time. The response to the first project made him continue when he needed help, people from 38 countries helped him to cover 18 boulders. He liked crocheting and started to make 7-inch granny squares. He later decided to make bigger and bigger granny squares and now is a World Guinness holder from making the largest crocheted granny square.

All he did in his life was to take big projects and break it down into smaller ones and make marginal improvements in the process to achieve the goal. Take your ambitious goals and start pursuing them by making marginal adjustments in your routine.

#IAS Academy in Chennai
#IAS Coaching in Chennai
#Best IAS Academy in Chennai
#Best IAS Coaching in Chennai
#IAS Coaching Centre in Chennai
#UPSC Coaching in Chennai