For a long time, I thought the hardest part of breaking a world record was the attempt itself. The more records I pursued, though, the more I realized that a lot of the important work happens much earlier, when you decide what you’re actually going to try to do.
The target matters because it changes everything that follows.
Choose something too easy and there isn’t much reason to change. You might accomplish the goal, but you can probably do it using the same skills, habits and approach you already have. Go too far in the other direction and you run into a different problem. If a target feels so far beyond what’s possible that you can’t imagine a realistic path to it, it becomes difficult to stay engaged with the pursuit.
That space between the two is what I call The Goldilocks Record™: a target that is hard enough to require growth, but possible enough to inspire action.
Too easy doesn’t ask enough of us
There’s nothing wrong with an easy win. Sometimes we need one, especially when we’re learning something new or trying to build momentum. But an easy target and a meaningful target aren’t necessarily the same thing.
If I can break a record before lunch without changing anything about how I prepare, practise or perform, it might technically be a record, but it probably isn’t going to change me very much.
The targets that interest me most are the ones that expose a gap between what I can do now and what I’ll need to be able to do. That gap forces me to start asking useful questions. Do I need better technique? More consistency? Different equipment? More practice? Someone else’s expertise? Am I even approaching the problem the right way?
Now the target is doing something useful before I’ve achieved it. It’s giving me a reason to grow.
When hard starts looking impossible
I love ambitious ideas. You almost have to if you’re interested in world records. But there is a point where ambitious becomes unbelievable, and I’ve experienced that too.
When the distance between where you are and where you need to be is enormous, staring at the final number doesn’t always motivate you. Sometimes it does the opposite. You can’t see how you could possibly get from here to there, so there’s nothing obvious to work on.
That’s where one of the ideas behind The Goldilocks Record started to become clear to me:
Impossible ends the conversation. Hard starts the plan.
If something is impossible, there isn’t much to discuss. But if we can shift our thinking from impossible to genuinely hard, the conversation changes. We can start asking how far away we are, what would have to improve, who might be able to help, what we could test and what a first step might look like.
The target hasn’t become easier. We’ve started making the path more believable.
Belief can be built
I think we sometimes assume that we need to believe completely in a difficult goal before we start working toward it. My experience has often been the opposite. Belief grows because we begin seeing evidence that improvement is possible.
Maybe you haven’t broken the record, but you’ve set a new personal best. Maybe a technique that felt awkward a month ago is becoming consistent. Maybe something that kept going wrong suddenly works. Those moments don’t guarantee the final result, but they begin closing the gap between “I can’t do this” and “I might be able to do this.”
That’s why the right target matters so much. Once it’s chosen, it begins shaping the preparation. You practise, measure, get feedback, adjust and try again. Eventually, something that once felt out of reach can start to look very different.
Not easy. Possible.
Set a target worth changing for
A Goldilocks Record doesn’t have to be an actual world record. It could be a company record, a team record or a personal record nobody else ever hears about.
What matters is the relationship between the target and the people pursuing it. Is it meaningful? Will it require something new? Is there enough difficulty that growth will be necessary? And is there still enough of a believable path that people are willing to begin?
A good target tells you whether you succeeded.
A great target can change what you need to become in order to succeed.
That’s the space I’m interested in: somewhere between comfortable and impossible, where the outcome isn’t guaranteed but the pursuit still feels worth taking on.
Hard enough to require growth. Possible enough to inspire action.