How to Achieve Your Most Ambitious Goals | Stephen Duneier | TEDxTucson
TLDRThe speaker describes how making small, marginal improvements in our decision-making can lead to outsized gains in achieving ambitious goals. Using personal examples and case studies like artist Chuck Close and tennis pro Novak Djokovic, he shows how focusing on improving our 'decision success rate' by just a few percentage points compounds over time, allowing us to accomplish things previously thought out of reach. The key is breaking big goals down into tiny, achievable tasks, where tiny gains stack up. He aims to inspire the audience to pull their own ambitious dreams off the shelf by making a marginal adjustment to their routines.
Takeaways
- 😀 Success depends more on how we approach problems and make decisions, not just talent
- 👌 Marginal improvements in process can have huge impacts on end results
- 📈 Novak Djokovic went from #680 to #1 by improving his decision success rate to 55%
- ✏️ Break big goals down into small manageable tasks requiring just 5-10 mins focus
- 🚶♂️ Steven used daily walks to learn German through marginal adjustments
- 🥾 Hiking goals depend on tiny decisions like getting off the couch and out the door
- 📚 Reading goals depend on reading just one more word, sentence, paragraph...
- 🧶 Yarnbombing shows how small stitches add up to giant crocheted structures
- 🌎 Steven broke records with marginal improvements, not special talent
- 🔥 You can achieve ambitious dreams with marginal adjustments to your routine
Q & A
How does Chuck Close create art using the 'one gray square' technique?
-Chuck Close creates photorealistic portraits by breaking down images into small uniform squares and replicating each square one at a time to build up the full image.
What was Novak Djokovic's decision success rate when he first turned professional?
-When Novak Djokovic first turned professional in 2004, his decision success rate was about 49%, meaning he won about 49% of the points he played.
What change did the speaker make in his junior year of college to improve his academic performance?
-The speaker broke assignments down into small 5-10 minute tasks that fit his attention span, taking short breaks between tasks instead of trying to focus for long periods.
How did the speaker apply marginal improvements to achieve his goal of losing 25 pounds?
-Instead of going on a diet, he set a goal to hike 33 trails in a year. He focused on the small decisions needed to actually do each hike, like getting off the couch and driving to the trailhead.
What was the speaker's motivation for learning how to knit?
-The speaker wanted to yarnbomb a 40-foot tall eucalyptus tree. When his wife suggested he learn knitting, he saw it as a step towards achieving that goal.
How large was the crocheted granny square that set the world record?
-The world record crocheted granny square was 10 meters x 10 meters and incorporated over 30 miles of yarn and over 500,000 stitches.
How did the speaker fund his ambitious projects?
-The speaker had a successful career in finance and hedge fund management, which likely provided the means to pursue ambitious artistic projects.
What message is the speaker trying to convey in his talk?
-The speaker aims to inspire the audience that they can achieve ambitious dreams by breaking them into small, achievable tasks and making marginal improvements.
What was the speaker's academic performance like growing up?
-The speaker struggled to focus and was a C/C- student from kindergarten through the first two years of college.
What role did social media play in the eucalyptus tree yarnbombing project?
-The speaker used his social media followers as "The Yarnbomber" to source yarn contributions from over 300 people to help wrap the eucalyptus tree.
Outlines
😄 Introducing the concept of marginal improvements
The paragraph introduces the concept of marginal improvements - making small, incremental changes to our decision-making process - to achieve ambitious goals. It gives the example of artist Chuck Close who uses a grid technique to create photorealistic artwork. The speaker argues that possessing talent matters less than our approach to solving problems through better decisions.
👍 Applying marginal gains to Novak Djokovic's tennis career
This paragraph analyzes tennis player Novak Djokovic's career progression in terms of marginal gains. It tracks how slight improvements in his decision-making, measured by percentage of points won, led to exponential increases in match wins, rankings, and earnings over the years. The paragraph emphasizes how small changes compound over time.
💡 Using marginal improvements for academic and professional success
The speaker shares how he went from being a C student to a straight-A student by making a marginal adjustment to his study routine - breaking assignments down into shorter tasks. He applied a similar approach in his career, rising to leadership roles in finance. The technique helped him achieve personal goals like learning German and getting fit.
😃 Pursuing ambitious projects through marginal gains
In this paragraph, the speaker describes how he has taken on ambitious hobby projects like hiking, reading, charitable initiatives, and learning skills by focusing on marginal improvements. He shares anecdotes about small daily choices adding up to eventually accomplish bigger goals like yarnbombing trees and setting a World Record.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Decision making
💡Marginal adjustment
💡Ambitious goal
💡Task decomposition
💡Yarnbombing
💡Active participation
💡Guinness World Records
💡Social media following
💡Inspire audiences
💡Pattern recognition
Highlights
What stands between us and achieving our ambitions has less to do with talent and more to do with how we approach problems and make decisions.
Even a marginal improvement in our decision-making process can have a huge impact on our end results.
Novak Djokovic went from ranked #680 to #3 by improving his decision success rate from 49% to 52%.
I changed my approach to schoolwork by breaking assignments into small, manageable tasks I could focus on for 5-10 minutes at a time.
This marginal adjustment took me from a C student to straight As and honors.
I applied this approach to learning German by listening to language tapes in place of music during my commute.
After 10 months and 99 tapes, I spoke German well enough to converse when I visited Berlin.
Rather than diet, I hiked trails and lost 25 pounds while pursuing my passion for the outdoors.
I read 50 books in a year by focusing on reading just one word at a time when I'd normally waste time.
I learned skills like knitting not for their own sake but as a step toward ambitious public art projects.
My yarnbombing art drew global attention and led me to wrap a children's hospital in Tucson.
I spent over 2 years crocheting a record-breaking 10 meter x 10 meter granny square.
All that matters is breaking big goals into small decisions you can improve at the margins.
I'm hoping to inspire you to pursue ambitious dreams by making marginal adjustments.
I remain unfocused, untalented and unskilled - I just gradually improve my odds of success.
Transcripts
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