Motivation
How Attempting Bold Goals Can Accelerate Your Progress
Discover the ambitious experimenter within you.
Posted June 25, 2025 Reviewed by Kaja Perina
This week, depending on when you read this, Faith Kipyegon will attempt to be the first woman to run a mile in under 4 minutes. If you're unfamiliar, she's a triple Olympic champion in the 1500m, a mother, and the current world record holder in the mile. However, her best mile time is 4:07, quite the gap to under 4 minutes.
Even if you have no interest in sports, we can learn a lot from her attempt at "Breaking 4" about the transformative nature of bold goals.
As defined here, bold goals are those that carry a risk of failure. They're impossible when you set them, meaning they're not achievable with your current tools and knowledge. They'll require more than grit to leap the chasm from the status quo to the goal.
Here we'll explore how bold goals capture attention and drive experimentation, and how you can utilize the same strategies for self-improvement.
What Attempting A Bold Goal Does
A bold goal prompts you to:
1. Experiment beyond repeatable strategies
When anyone takes on a challenge like Breaking 4, it's about proof of concept. The strategies you use don't need to be scalable. The event organizers can produce a shoe, clothing, etc., that's perfectly suited to one athlete.
2. Turn every dial and influence all variables
When you're trying to reach a goal that seems unattainable, it requires not just focusing on the big rocks, but all the small rocks too. Variables you haven't attempted to influence before get attention. You'll often learn there are many more variables that you can influence than you'd been aware of. (This process can be especially rewarding if you're a natural maximizer and seeking a positive outlet for that tendency.)
3. Accelerate your timelines and decisions
Having an aiming point, like the Breaking 4 event, causes you to accelerate your timeframes and combats overthinking.
4. Adapt to surprises
When we tweak a lot of different variables, looking to make the impossible possible, there will be surprises. Some variables will emerge as more important or more malleable than expected. We have to adapt to emerging evidence.
5. Create a story that captures attention and sparks imagination
Even if an attempt is unsuccessful at first, attempting the goal gives it a higher profile. It becomes a specific target. The earlier "Breaking 2" project about breaking two hours in the marathon elevated that goal. It made it even more of a landmark than it already was for athletes and the broader running community. Bold goals can help create a rallying point around the challenge. They get others interested and involved. For example, publicity can lead to outside experts contributing ideas or other people attempting the same goal and coming up with important innovations.
6. Optimize performance, not just preparation
With a goal like Breaking 4, there are many human logistical factors that require attention, like managing the pacers (other runners who will block wind and help create ideal racing conditions). No matter how much you prepare, the act of going live always surfaces new variables, challenges, and insights.
Bold Goals Shift Your Mindset Toward Excellence and Drive Experimentation
Some of us tend to mainly set goals that focus on habit consistency (for example, to eat a salad every day). Those goals are inherently different from the type discussed here. That behavior is within your current capacity; you are already capable of eating a salad today, but you are seeking repeatability. Each type of goal has its place, but bold goals have unique potential, as explained.
Consider any area of your life or work where you would benefit from setting a goal that requires innovation and experimentation with new variables to achieve, not just more grit or habit strategies.
You can keep areas of your life interesting, avoid staleness, and rapidly accelerate your progress by setting a goal that motivates you to influence every variable possible to achieve your aim. Setting these types of goals can help you maximize the benefits of an experimenter's mindset, curb overthinking, and potentially engage with others in new ways.
Attempt Goals Others Aren't
Transformative goals, especially those that others are not attempting, have the potential to help you level up the way you approach challenges generally, and inspire both yourself and others. If your goal is excellence in what you do, consider this approach. Don't be afraid to try strategies that might only work in one context, for proof of concept. If you're a perfectionist who needs to become more willing to experiment, read this guide next.
