So I’m thinking we have the makings of a pretty nifty community here at Disrupting the Rabblement. These past few months have seen more and more of you fine readers chiming in with comments, and I’m conversing with an ever-growing number of you via Twitter, Facebook and email.
Through all of those channels, I’ve been able to hear some very cool stories about what big goals and adventures you’ve all got going on. And it’s inspiring stuff. In fact, connecting with all you fellow rabble rousers online has been something of a lifesaver for me here in Spain, where I’ve found it difficult to meet free-thinking proactive types, especially with the language barrier. I imagine I’d be one depressed and frustrated hombre right now if not for all the support and positivity I receive via the big web machine. (Muchas gracias!)
Now here’s what I want to do today: Introduce you fine folks to one another.
In a minute I’ll ask you to go leave a comment, but I don’t want you to leave just any old comment. Nope, I want you to really dig deep and hit me with your biggest, most lofty, audacious and ridiculous goal. You know, the one that’s likely to draw laughs and eye-rolls from all the old folks back in the village and all the lads in the pub. Except you don’t have to worry about such reactions here at Disrupting the Rabblement, because we’re all about thinking big and tackling the impossible, screw the naysayers and dream-slayers.
The Five Tongues of Awesome is what I’ve dubbed my dream of becoming fluent in the world’s five most widely-spoken languages. Those five would be (as measured by number of native speakers, according to Wikipedia):
Mandarin
Spanish
English
Hindi-Urdu
Arabic
Being fluent in those five languages would mean I’d be able to communicate effectively with approximately 1/3 of all people living on this big rock we call home. Which methinks would be pretty damn cool.
And I don’t just mean conversationally fluent. I’d be aiming to reach a level of fluency that would allow me to deliver a clear and effective speech in front of at least 100 native speakers of each language, and be comfortable handling Q&A afterwards.
Now every goal needs a deadline, so I’m going to give myself until the age of 40 to achieve this. As of this writing, I’m 29 years old. I’m already pretty handy at the auld English and I’m almost three months deep into learning Spanish (steadily approaching conversational fluency). I know nothing of the other three languages on the above list, other than they look and sound funny.
I figure with at least two years of consistent study and practice at each of those languages, together with some healthy doses of immersion, I should be able to achieve my goal, while having plenty of adventures along the way
Your turn!
Alright, over to you. Let me know of your biggest, craziest goal via the comments. Put it out there, make it that bit more tangible. Let’s all see the legendary company we keep by reading this blog.
…
P.S. Even if you don’t feel like sharing, be sure to check out the first comment below for details on a special offer for DtR readers.
I’ve come to realize over the past few years that public accountability is a powerful thing for me. When I have a goal in mind and I announce it on my blog or tell a bunch of friends, I find I’m far more likely to actually achieve that goal than if I had just kept it to myself.
But then along comes Derek Sivers with a great TED Talk, citing a bunch of research which proves that “telling someone your goals makes them less likely to happen.”
I can’t knock what Derek is saying. I’ll give that research the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s all true, that most people are indeed better off keeping their goals to themselves.
But here’s the thing: I’m not most people. I’m not the average or the mean or the majority. I’ve tested for me, as an individual with my own unique set of ever-changing beliefs, values, motivations and circumstances. And as that person, announcing my goals to the world has proven to be a pretty good idea.
But that’s just me. You have to test for you. What works for one person or even a group of people at one time and in one place may not work for you here and now. Or maybe it will. But you can’t ever know for sure until you test for yourself.
A few other examples to illustrate this point:
Back in January there was a great debate on Think Traffic about whether it’s a good idea to allow comments on your blog. Pat Flynn argued absolutely, while Ev Bogue argued definitely not. I have a hard time believing either guy is wrong. Their opposing approaches each work great for them.
The only way to find out what works for you is via trial and error. No getting around it. You have to jump in, get your hands dirty, throw a whole bunch of shit at the wall and see what sticks. Keep what works and discard the rest.
You can’t stand there waiting to take action until a sure thing comes along, because there is no sure thing. There’s just what works for some people, and there’s what works for you. The former you can spend all day reading about on the Internet. The latter you can only discover through experimentation.
Question: What works for you that doesn’t work for most people?
…
UPDATE: Just came across this excellent TED Talk from Tim Harford, where he talks about the value of trial and error, and the curse of what he calls the God Complex.
So my brief time back home in Ireland has come to a close. I’m writing this post from a coffee shop in Dublin, and tomorrow I jet off to spend four months living in Spain.
Just before moving to Cork in late December I wrote a post called The plan of attack: How I intend to earn money, gain influence, and make a difference, in which I listed out all the things I wanted to accomplish before I left for Spain. Now it’s time to look back and see how I fared. Such reviews are important methinks. They help me understand my limitations and get better at setting realistic goals. Hopefully you’ll find these reviews interesting, too.
I had the following goals for my four months in Cork:
Release a free manifesto
Release a paid product
Speak at three or more conferences/universities
Speak on Irish radio
Appear on Irish national television
Secure a spot as a columnist for a large Irish newspaper
Guest blog at least once every fortnight
Post an interview at least once every fortnight
Take a trip to Dublin and Northern Ireland
Take a trip to England, Scotland and Wales
Build community, help spread knowledge
Let’s run through each goal to see how it actually played out. Green for success, red for failure, other colors by mistake.
1. Release a free manifesto
I accomplished this on schedule, releasing Disrupting the Rabblement: How to think for yourself, live your dreams, and piss off some zombies at the end of January. I was very happy with how it was received. I’ve gotten lots of positive feedback about it and by my best estimation, the work has now been downloaded just over 1,000 times. Giggidy.
Initially I was aiming to release my first paid product at the end of February, but then I decided to build an entire online course, so I pushed back the release date to mid-March. On March 17th, I beta launched A Course In Courage. The goal of the course is to help other people become more courageous and live their dreams, all for the price of one cup of coffee per week.
While there is still lots of room for improvement in the course, the feedback I’ve gotten from reviewers and participants has been primarily positive. Not many people have signed up for A Course In Courage however, and so it hasn’t generated anything close to the revenue that I was hoping for. I believe I’m mostly failing with the marketing side of things, so I’ll be working hard on that going forward.
3. Speak at three or more conferences/universities
I was hoping to do this in March and April, and it was largely dependent on a lucrative launch of my paid product. The idea to go into universities and show them how I was able to make money online by my own efforts, without having to rely on traditional employment or suck up to gatekeepers. Of course, I couldn’t talk that talk without first walking that walk, so as it turned out I didn’t even look for such speaking opportunities. Hopefully I’ll be in a position to do so later this year.
All that said, I did get some public speaking experience these past few months. I attended several local Toastmasters clubs and participated in Table Topics, and even acted as the guest lead for a meeting in March (thanks, Pat!). Then there was my well-received Pecha Kucha presentation back in January, and my second foray into stand-up comedy a couple of weeks ago. Videos for those…
4. Speak on Irish radio
I’ll call this mission accomplished. Twice I was able to get on one of Ireland’s largest radio stations, Today FM. The first time was to play Ah-Yeah-Okay on the Ray Foley Show (mp3), and the second time was to discuss minimalism with Ray D’Arcy (mp3). Ideally, I would have also been able to get on the radio to discuss online entrepreneurship, but again I felt I needed to have some real success under my belt before I could talk about that on the airwaves.
5. Appear on Irish national television
Fail. I didn’t even give this one a good effort, apart from sending an email to inquire about tickets to Pat Kenny’s Frontline (no reply). As with the last two goals, I didn’t feel confident going after this one without first having some entrepreneurial success behind me.
6. Secure a spot as a columnist for a large Irish newspaper
This is a goal I feel I could have achieved if I had pushed for it, but I really didn’t put forth any effort. I would still like to do this in future, writing monthly about the mobile lifestyle I’m creating for myself, but I’m aware that the task would require some serious energy and attention. Can’t go submitting just any old crap to a national newspaper.
7. Guest blog at least once every fortnight
I failed miserably at this, only contributing a couple of guest posts to smaller blogs over the past four months, and those only came about by invitation. Apart from a pair of failed submissions, I didn’t go hard after any game-changing guest posts on big blogs. I underestimated how much of my time and energy would be required to do that.
8. Post an interview at least once every fortnight
I started off in January doing an interview every fortnight, and I liked how the posts turned out. However, the interviews didn’t generate a lot of traffic and didn’t seem to resonate much with my regular readers. Given how much work I put into them, I determined I wasn’t getting enough return on my investment and pulled the plug.
I’m still calling this mission accomplished though. I gave it my best shot before realizing that interviews weren’t a good fit for my blog. No failure there.
For those of you interested in checking out the interview posts, here are the links:
I’m in Dublin now, but only so I can fly to Madrid, and I didn’t get close to visiting Northern Ireland. Trying to figure out this self-employment thing and get some sustainable income flowing, I didn’t think it wise to take chunks of time off to go traveling.
10. Take a trip to England, Scotland and Wales
Same as the above. No trip to the UK for me these past few months. Perhaps I’ll be in a position to remedy that after Spain.
11. Build community, help spread knowledge
This was three goals rolled into one. First I wanted to create a Meetup group for Cork-based people who want to make a positive difference in the world. That became Cork World Changers, and through it I was able to meet some great people and share and receive lots of value. It looks like it’s going to continue on strong without me now, which I’m delighted about. Many thanks to everyone involved.
Second, I wanted to start a Mastermind group, Skyping with some cool people every week or so, bouncing ideas and encouragement off each other. That came to fruition when Spyros Heniadis asked if I’d like to join his group, along with Nada from miniMOMist. It’s been a great experience.
Finally, I wanted to volunteer at least one evening per week, sharing web design and computer skills with others. This I failed at. I did deliver an extended web design class at a local community center a few weeks back, and I did volunteer for an afternoon at a local Oxfam shop, but that was the extent of my volunteer activities in Cork. No excuses here, I simply didn’t make it a priority to seek out more opportunities.
Overall
So I reached 5 out of my 11 goals during my four months in Cork. I’m okay with that. I intentionally set my goals high to push myself. I believe it’s better to set big, exciting goals and fall short than it is to set small, boring goals and reach them. There’s a bar chart out there somewhere that depicts that idea nicely, but fecked if I can find it.
If I could do the last four months over again though, I definitely wouldn’t set so many goals for such a short period of time. Experience has shown me how distractions (some welcome, some not) can sneak in, projects can take longer or become more complex than expected, motivation can come and go.
New goals
Looking forward to my four months in Spain I’m mainly going to be focused on just two goals:
Become fluent in Spanish
Start earning at least $1,000 per month online
I’ll need to be much more disciplined going forward to keep my priorities straight and stay on track. It’s actually pretty cool that I’m moving to a new city in a new country where I don’t know anyone. It’s like hitting the reset button, starting from scratch, getting a do-over.
Destination X
Speaking of goals, and before I wrap this up, I want to mention a recent product released by David Damron. It’s called Destination X: Your Guide to Accomplishing Anything (affiliate link). David sent me a review copy and I liked it a whole helluva lot, enough to recommend it to you folks. You’ve probably noticed by now that I don’t recommend a lot of products on here, but this one is worth checking out.
Note that you’ll only get full value from Destination X if you’re willing to sit down and go through the worksheets. It’s not just an ebook that you can skim through and expect it to change your world.
If Destination X sounds like your cup of tea, and you buy it through my affiliate link, forward me along your email receipt (himself at ndoherty dot com) and I’ll happily throw in a 30-minute Skype call so we can chat about goal setting and whatever it is you’re working towards.
RSS and e-mail readers, please click here to watch the video that accompanies this post.
I have four months left in Ireland. I fly to Spain on May 3rd. My flight is booked, nonrefundable. ¡Olé!
But I have a lot of things I want to accomplish before then. My main goals can be summarized like so:
Start earning enough money to cover all my expenses.
Build my audience.
Make a significant positive difference in people’s lives, especially here in Ireland.
I believe the key to achieving all those goals is the same: Provide more value to more and more people. That means getting out there and learning more, having more experiences and writing my ass off to share what works for me.
To keep focused and on track I’ve set myself some mini-goals and milestones for the next four months. Here they are:
1. Release a free manifesto
This will be at the end of January. It will be called Disrupting the Rabblement and it will delve deeper into the theme of this whole project I’ve started. I’m already working on the outline and I’m excited to get into the real writing. I believe the manifesto will be a helpful guide for anyone feeling stuck or unsatisfied with their life.
(Why free? Because I want to grow my audience. This blog doesn’t have a big enough readership yet for me to start selling premium products. Releasing the DtR manifesto as a paid product would probably result in very few sales. Giving it away for free increases the likelihood of it being read and shared by a lot of people, getting more minds familiar with my name and message. Hopefully that will help make the next thing a success…)
2. Release a paid product
I haven’t settled on an exact idea for this yet, but I’ll be releasing it by the end of February. I may end up creating a course or writing another guide. A lot will depend on the success of #1 above. I’m hoping I’ll get a plenty of feedback from that which will help me figure out what else I have to offer people.
3. Speak at three or more conferences/universities
I plan to get some public speaking experience in March and April. By then I hope to have had some tangible success and be in a position where I can offer advice to other people who are looking to build an audience or make money online. I’d especially like to inspire more of an entrepreneurial mindset in students, so they’re not as dependent on finding a 9-to-5 job as soon as they leave school.
4. Speak on Irish radio
This is actually two goals rolled into one. I would like to get on Irish national radio any which way I can, and methinks I’ll be able to achieve that fairly easily by playing Ah-Yeah-OK on the Ray Foley show some afternoon (I’ve been listening in for the last few weeks but it seems they haven’t been playing it much during the run up to Christmas). This is more for fun than anything.
The second part of this goal is to appear on any local/national radio show as a guest and talk about topics related to my blog (e.g. small business, personal development, minimalism, lifestyle design, etc.). D’Mudder tells me that The Business with George Lee on RTE Radio1 might be just the job.
5. Appear on Irish national television
This is perhaps the most ambitious goal on my list, but I’m dreaming big here so no holding back. The logical next step after doing radio would be to try television. I’m not a big fan of television but it would be a way of getting my message to a lot of people who might otherwise never hear it. I’m not even sure though which TV program would be suitable for me to appear on as a guest. Maybe Nationwide?
Like the speaking engagements and radio invite, this will be difficult to make happen unless I have some early success with my business. Nobody will care what I have to say if I’m not walking the walk. As such, a LOT depends on my paid product (#2 on this list) selling well.
6. Secure a spot as a columnist for a large Irish newspaper
Again, dreaming big. Ideally this would be a national newspaper, but I’d also be happy with a writing gig for a large local or regional paper. This would be another way for my message to reach people it wouldn’t otherwise reach (More on this: Chris Guillebeau explains the importance of having multiple spheres of influence).
I would not expect to be paid by the newspaper, and I’d like to write my column just once per month, twice tops.
7. Guest blog at least once every fortnight
This will help me network with other bloggers and grow my audience. I’m planning to reach out to bloggers who I really admire and highly respect.
8. Post an interview at least once every fortnight
If I’m interviewing other bloggers, this provides similar advantages to guest blogging. I’ve also found that I come across lots of good ideas while doing research for interviews (like this one with Corbett Barr and Everett Bogue). It’s amazing what gold you can find by digging through someone’s archives.
However, I don’t just want to interview bloggers. I have a few friends (and I’m sure I’ll make many more in the coming months) who have figured out how to make a nice chunk of passive income online without having a blog. I’d like to pick their brains and share their stories.
I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately, and I expect I’ll be writing much more about it here in the coming months. My brain is still chewing on a few ideas, but for the sake of this exercise I’ll throw out some tangible targets to aim for:
Create a Meetup group for people who want to change the world. Meet twice weekly in Cork. Have at least five people show up at every meeting in March and April.
Start a Mastermind group with three other people. Do a weekly conference call.
Volunteer at least one evening per week, sharing web design and computer skills with others. (I would LOVE to get involved with something like Dave Eggers talks about in this TED talk. Following the same model, Roddy Doyle has set up a tutoring center in Dublin. Cork, and every city in Ireland for that matter, would benefit from similar.)
Okay, so how do I actually accomplish all of those things?
I’ll need to be very disciplined with my writing. That will have to be my priority. I’ll need to establish a routine, getting up at 6am or earlier (I’ll experiment with 5am and afternoon naps) to workout and write. The rest of my day will be spent in the company of remarkable people, doing a few side projects, networking online and reading books.
If I can stay focused and keep all that up through January and February, I should have much of the network and the financial support I need to start making the other goals a reality. That is, if I just knuckle down and do what I know I’m capable of doing, I expect my audience will grow exponentially and I’ll generate some decent income from what I release at the end of February.
The point of this post
First, I know by now that I’m more likely to get up off my ass and do something when I announce my plans publicly. If I don’t post all of the above on here, I can always let myself off the hook later. Ah sure nobody but me will know if I failed, so I won’t worry about it! No, better to raise the stakes a little, put some pressure on myself to succeed.
Maybe I’m biting off more than I can chew, but I’m intentionally setting the bar high so I’ll push myself. If I accomplish even half of the things on the list above, I’m sure I’ll be able to look back fondly on my few months in Ireland. To quote a wise turtle…
“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that our aim is too low and we make it.” – Michaelangelo
Second, I’ve learned that helpful doors have a tendency to open when more people know where you’re trying to get to. To give one example, back in November I was a week away from going to San Francisco and I still hadn’t arranged accommodation. Then I got a text message out of the blue from a friend (thanks, Erin!) saying I could stay with her parents there if needed. Happy days. But if I hadn’t been telling everyone with ears about my upcoming trip, that offer would never have come my way.
So who knows, maybe some TV or radio producer will stumble across this post and see that I’m trying to get 15 minutes on the airwaves. Maybe she’ll like my stuff and hook me up.
The lesson here is that you have to broadcast your desires. If nobody knows what you’re looking for, nobody can help you find it.
And my third and final reason for writing all this, is my readers. I’m trying to lay down a blueprint here, so others will be able to follow along behind me and learn what they need to do to achieve their own dreams. Or, at the very least, they’ll be able to see what doesn’t work and not waste their time trying similar things
What’s your plan of attack?
What unrealistic goals do you have? Being completely honest with yourself, how likely are you to actually achieve them? How can you improve those odds?
Last Sunday, right before my sixth workout and just about halfway through the experiment, I took all my body measurements and found that I had gained approximately 4 lbs of muscle and 4 lbs of fat. Projecting forward the best case scenario, that meant I was on course to finish the 6 weeks with a 16 lb weight gain, half of which would have been fat. I wasn’t okay with that, so I decided to bail on the experiment.
Well, kinda.
I’ve accepted that there’s no way I’m going to reach my originally stated goal, so from that point of view the experiment is over. Turns out that, at least for me using this method, it’s not possible to put on 20lbs of muscle in six weeks on a vegan diet while doing only one hour of exercise per week. I know, some of you are shocked and amazed
However, I’m not quite ready to give up on muscle building completely. I learned from my experiment that I quite enjoy the slow weight training, so I’ll continue doing that once a week. My trainer records every exercise I do and it’s obvious that my strength has increased significantly over the past three weeks. I like that. I’ll also be adding back in some regular cardio work, because I’ve really been missing it during the past three weeks.
As regards the diet, I’m abandoning the meal plan altogether. I do intend to consume upwards of 3,000 calories per day, but I won’t be measuring every gram of carbs, fat and protein that I put in my body. After three weeks of carefully planned and measured meals, it’s a welcome relief to be able to eat whatever I feel like again.
What I didn’t learn from all this
Quite a few people — both in person and online — told me before I started this experiment that it was unrealistic and that I was unlikely to succeed. And those people turned out to be right. But the funny thing is that I have no regrets about doing the experiment. I’m not sitting here cursing myself for not listening to those people. And that’s because I now know some things for sure, from direct experience.
There’s that saying that you always regret the things you haven’t done more than the things you have. If I had agreed with the naysayers at the start and accepted that what I was trying to do was impossible, there always would have been a nagging voice in my head saying, But what if they were wrong?
You see, I just had to try it for myself. For me, trying equals succeeding. Well, not just trying, but trying hard. I’ve failed at lots of things in life, but the only failures I feel bad about are the ones where I didn’t give it my all.
Don’t try, you might fail!
So what? No big deal. What’s the point in doing only what you know will succeed? Where would mankind be if people only did what they knew would work? You’ve heard all those stories about Thomas Edison and Michael Jordan and other famous names who attributed much of their success to a willingness to fail. I believe that.
So, you might think I learned a lesson here. And I believe I did learn many things. But one thing I didn’t learn is that you should never try to do what other people think is crazy or impossible. I never want to learn that lesson. I’m terrified of what I’d miss out on if I did.
What crazy or impossible goal do you have? Why don’t you give it a shot? Go all out and see if you can make it happen. Even if there’s only a tiny chance that you’ll succeed, that’s still significantly better than your chance of success (i.e. ZERO) if you don’t try at all.
And if you do try and end up failing, trust me, that feels way better than just accepting defeat without trying at all.
I quit my 9-to-5 job in November of 2010 and have since become a self-employed vagabond, pursuing my passions and helping other people escape mediocrity while I travel around the world without flying.
Disrupting the Rabblement is proudly supported by donations from generous readers just like you, allowing me to finally retire full-time from the stripping industry (I was especially popular with the over 60's crowd).
For those of you legendary folks who wish to make a one-time donation, you can do so below. As a thank you, I may or may not send you an autographed photo from my pole dancing days.
Now here’s what I want to do today: Introduce you fine folks to one another.
Now every goal needs a deadline, so I’m going to give myself until the age of 40 to achieve this. As of this writing, I’m 29 years old. I’m already pretty handy at the auld English and I’m almost three months deep into learning Spanish (steadily approaching conversational fluency). I know nothing of the other three languages on the above list, other than they look and sound funny.
So my brief time back home in Ireland has come to a close. I’m writing this post from a coffee shop in Dublin, and tomorrow I jet off to spend four months living in Spain.
I started off in January doing an interview every fortnight, and I liked how the posts turned out. However, the interviews didn’t generate a lot of traffic and didn’t seem to resonate much with my regular readers. Given how much work I put into them, I determined I wasn’t getting enough return on my investment and pulled the plug.
Second, I wanted to start a Mastermind group, Skyping with some cool people every week or so, bouncing ideas and encouragement off each other. That came to fruition when 
