How I set goals to outlast 99% of the competition
Learn how to get top 1% outcomes
I was asked recently to make a video about my own approach to goal setting. Though I certainly don’t consider myself to have “made it” yet or to be where I want to be in life, by some traditional measures I have achieved some level of “success” for a person my age (I’m 25 as I write this, am currently working at Google in NYC, have a six figure net worth, and run a YT channel with 50,000 subscribers).
It feels cringe to even say that I am a “successful” person (because deep down I have a sense of imposter syndrome and deep rooted insecurities), but my goal here is not to boast but to impart the lessons I’ve learned from my own experience landing multiple highly competitive roles (<1% acceptance rates) in tech (Google), management consulting (BCG), and investment banking (Solomon Partners).
So, how do I set goals, and how do I approach top 1% outcomes that feel out of reach?
When you have a goal, the biggest issues people usually face are:
Your goal feels too hard, so you don’t even try (e.g., I wanted to be an astronaut growing up, but after realizing how few seats there are in NASA’s astronaut class, I decided in college to become a corporate cog on Wall Street instead)
You try, don’t receive positive feedback, and eventually quit (e.g., I wanted to learn how to do yo-yo tricks as a kid, I tried watching online tutorials, bought a yo-yo, but ended up quitting after 3 months because I lacked the proper training / people around me) - 99% of people fall here
You try, and achieve the goal, but then you realize the goal was never what you actually wanted - it was the climb that you enjoyed, not the destination (this is a better problem to have)
Today we’re going to address those of you in bucket number 2. If you take my 5-step framework and commit to action and not just mental masturbation (reading about success but never doing anything about it), I promise you will be successful with your goals.
Let’s get into it.
Step 1: Clarify
The first problem I’ve observed with goal setting, is that in the past I would declare some super ambitious, long-term goal for myself like the following:
“I want to be rich”
The problem is that this statement is not only super vague (rich in what sense? money? relationships?) but is also difficult to measure (what’s considered “rich” for 1 person could be poor for the next). Here’s a better example:
“I want to be a millionaire”
This one is slightly better, because now we’ve clarified this goal is about money, but it’s still missing a critical component: time.
“I want to have $1M net worth by age 35”
Now we’re talking. This goal is clearly defined, and has a clear time constraint which (1) makes the goal more concrete in our mind, and (2) creates more urgency.
Step 2: Understand
Even if you have a clear goal in mind, not all goals are worth pursuing. The most important questions to ask oneself are:
Why do I want this goal? (this forces us to reflect on our motivations)
Is this aligned with my core values? (this helps us avoid shiny object syndrome and go through short “phases”)
Is this something I am still excited by a day later? A week later? A month later? (if this still feels like a good idea after a night of sleep or a week has passed, it’s an indication this goal isn’t a temporary feeling or fleeting desire)
Step 3: Analyze
Now for the fun part - breaking the goal down into actionable steps. Let’s take our hypothetical example of wanting to have $1M in net worth by 35, and break it down.
“I will become a millionaire by age 35 by earning a high salary and living frugally”
Too vague, too general, not actionable enough and not explicit enough - one person’s definition of “living frugally” could be another person’s definition of “spending too much”
Feels very far in the future and therefore easier to put off until “later” or “I’m ready” (aka never)
Since this goal is a monetary one, we can do some simple math and find out that for a 21 year old today to become a millionaire by age 35, they would need to save and invest roughly ~$3,000 per month, assuming a 10% return in the S&P 500 (source). Note: this is a simplification and doesn’t account for inflation or market fluctuations beyond our control. For illustrative purposes only.
Assuming a $100k pre-tax salary —> 75K after-taxes / deductions in NYC, divided by 12 months in a year = $6,250 take home pay. $3000 is ~50% of that take home pay (ouch), and in NYC today even with a roommate you’re probably paying at least $2500-3500/month in rent for a half decent apartment, so this feels tough. But for this exercise, let’s say you are also running a side hustle that brings in $1-2k / month, so you’d only need to save about $1-2k from your day job (~25% of your take home pay).
Keeping this in mind, here’s how we could break our goal into even more practical steps:
“I will become a millionaire by 35 by investing 25% of my after-tax salary ($1-2k) and $1-2k from my side hustle each month in the S&P 500
Better than before, but still feels a bit overwhelming, so let’s break it down even further into first principles to better understand how we can accomplish this
Wealth = assets - liabilities, so we can either increase assets, decrease liabilities, or ideally do both!
Asset increasing activities
Increase earnings
Drive up current income stream (pay raise)
More streams of income (side hustle)
Increase savings rate
Cut out unnecessary spending
The goal here is not to overwhelm yourself but to break things down itno the simplest possible actions you can take to invest at least $3,000 per month.
Step 4: Continuously evaluate and iterate
After you’ve put an action plan into place, the work isn’t over. As you take steps towards your goal, take note of what you mess up and where you can remove friction.
Friction is anything that makes it more difficult to complete your daily action steps: to remove friction, automate stuff (e.g., automatic deposits) and anything else where you can “set it and forget it”.
Also avoid putting yourself in situations where it’s easy to mess up (e.g., if your goal is to lose weight, don’t have junk food lying around the house or within arms reach)
Periodically check in and ask yourself (1) how is it going, (2) what can I do better, (3) is this goal still something that aligns to my values?
If the answer to (3) is no longer yes, then something must have changed in your life to shift your perspective, and that’s ok. But make sure that you don’t let your emotions mislead you.
Quitting can be a skill too - we can accomplish anything, but not everything. The moment a goal stops becoming something that is leading you to your ideal life, then it no longer serves you.
Don’t blindly listen to toxic hustle culture advice and mindlessly continue. Knowing when to cut your losses is equally important as knowing when to stick it out. The problem for most people though, is they can’t stick with things long enough to even see some results, so cutting their losses shouldn’t be something they need to worry about (until they’ve been doing something for at least a year).
Step 5: Reframe your concept of goals
If you’ve made it this far, this means you’re probably an ambitious person who is serious about achieving their goals. To end, I’ll leave you with some of the most important advice I’ve learned from mentors and my career so far:
Stop thinking about “easy goals” or “the path of least resistance” - nothing worth having is inherently easy to get - if it was, nobody would want it (e.g., if everyone was an olympic gold medalist, then it would be meaningless)
Expect to be lonely and to feel like “I’m the only one going through this” - you don’t get top 1% outcomes by doing the same things as 99% of the population, and the higher up you go, statistically there are just less people who will relate to you
Expand the time horizon over which you expect to see results. People tend to overestimate what they will achieve in 5 years, but underestimate what they can achieve in a year of committed effort. Give yourself at least a full year before you call it quits.
Focus on the input (actions) you can control, not the output you cannot control
Understand that everyone else will define success by the outcome, but you should retrain yourself to define success by the actions you take, not the outcome which you have no control over
Understand that we may shoot for a specific goal, and sometimes land somewhere else, and that’s 100% okay. Goals should serve as general markers for the direction we want to drive towards in life, and not as exact measures of success or failure.
And that’s it - a simple 5 step framework that will maximize your chances of achieving top 1% outcomes.