All It Takes Is a Goal

All It Takes Is a Goal Plot Summary

Introduction

Do you ever feel like you're living half a life? Like there's a version of you—happier, more successful, more fulfilled—that exists just beyond your reach? You're not alone. Research shows that 50 percent of people feel they're using only 50 percent of their potential. Imagine that—walking around with half your gifts unopened, half your talents unexplored, half your possibilities unrealized. This gap between who we are and who we could be isn't a result of lacking ability. It's about lacking clarity on how to bridge that distance. The path from where you stand to where you could be isn't mysterious or available only to a select few. It's accessible through a surprisingly simple approach: turning your potential into actionable goals. Not the overwhelming, unrealistic targets we often set for ourselves, but purposeful, meaningful goals that connect to what truly lights you up. Throughout these pages, you'll discover how to identify what matters most to you, escape the comfort of complacency, build consistent momentum, and find the right fuel to sustain your journey—all through the power of intentional goal-setting.

Chapter 1: Identify Your Best Moments to Unlock Potential

When it comes to tapping into your potential, conventional wisdom tells us to start with a vision—to gaze into the future and imagine what could be. But this approach immediately hits what Jon Acuff calls the "Vision Wall," that intimidating barrier that demands you know your destination before taking a single step. The problem? Most of us struggle to envision our future with any clarity. Instead of looking forward, the key to unlocking your potential lies in looking backward. Creating a "Best Moments List" becomes your foundation for growth. This exercise is deceptively simple: take out a piece of paper and write down the moments in your life that have brought you the greatest joy or satisfaction. For the author, this revelation came in an airport when he began listing experiences like speaking to a sold-out crowd, his wedding day, the birth of his children, and surprisingly specific moments like "When a new month begins and I have a fresh thirty days at my disposal" or "Looking out the front door and seeing a package on our porch." The magic of this list reveals itself when you start categorizing these moments. Every best moment falls into one of four categories: Experience (moments you took part in), Accomplishment (moments achieved through effort), Relationship (moments made special by other people), or Object (physical items that bring joy). When the author analyzed his own list, he discovered 61 accomplishments, 59 experiences, 35 relationships, and only 15 objects. This simple exercise taught him more about himself than years of personality tests. For Sandra Miller, a research participant, creating her Best Moments List revealed that her happiest times came through shared experiences with others, not the solo achievements she'd been pursuing at work. "I realized I'd been chasing promotions when what really filled my cup was collaborative projects and mentoring junior staff," she explained. This insight led her to reshape her career goals around team leadership rather than individual advancement. To create your own Best Moments List, start with prompts like: "Time speeds up or slows down when I ________," "The best job I ever had was ________," "Every time I see ________, I smile," or "If I had a free hour today, I'd spend it ________." Don't judge or filter your answers—there's no bouncer at this door. Every moment gets in, regardless of size or significance. This retrospective approach works because it uses evidence from your actual life rather than guesses about an uncertain future. Your past contains the breadcrumb trail to your potential. When you review your completed list, you'll likely feel an immediate surge of gratitude, self-awareness, and mindfulness. Most importantly, you'll experience the thought that drives all potential: "I want more of that." The Best Moments List becomes your personal treasure map, showing exactly where and how to direct your energy for a more fulfilling life.

Chapter 2: Escape Comfort by Setting Easy Goals First

The comfort zone feels wonderful—it's safe, familiar, and requires almost nothing of you. That's exactly why it's so dangerous. Inside this cozy bubble, we've disconnected from our vision for life, settled for the familiar, and decided that dreaming is for other people. The problem isn't just recognizing we're stuck; it's figuring out how to get unstuck without immediately burning out. When attempting to leave the comfort zone, most people make the critical mistake of trying to sprint directly to their biggest goals. They wake up one morning and decide, "Today I'll write a book!" or "I'm going to lose 50 pounds!" without any foundation for success. This approach almost always fails because it ignores a fundamental truth: the hardest person to change is yourself. The author discovered this while attempting to improve his fitness. Instead of committing to a grueling exercise regimen right away, he took a counterintuitive approach. He started with what he calls an "Easy Goal"—scheduling a simple assessment with his neighbor Caleb Gregory, who owned CrossFit East Nashville. "I didn't even do CrossFit yet," he explains. "The first five steps were obvious: getting his phone number, texting him, setting up a time, doing the assessment, and putting my notes into a simple chart." This wasn't a dramatic transformation, but it created momentum. Easy Goals work because they have five essential characteristics. First, they have short time frames—they can be accomplished in one to seven days. Second, they have obvious first steps; there's no confusion about where to begin. Third, they're not expensive—overinvesting financially at the start of a goal creates unnecessary pressure. Fourth, they match your current schedule rather than requiring a complete overhaul of your life. Finally, they feel like they're "not enough"—which is precisely the point. April Scholl tried for years to start a consistent writing practice but kept abandoning her ambitious plans. When she switched to an Easy Goal of writing for just ten minutes each morning, something changed. "The first week felt almost silly—like I wasn't doing enough to call myself a writer," she shared. "But by week three, those ten-minute sessions started growing naturally to twenty, then thirty minutes. Six months later, I had completed a draft of my first short story collection." To create your own Easy Goal, filter your big aspirations through these five factors. If your goal takes ninety days to accomplish, it's not easy. If you can't figure out what to do first, make it smaller. If it stretches you financially, find a cheaper approach. If it requires an entirely different schedule, scale it back. If friends are amazed when you tell them about it, it's probably too hard. Remember, Easy Goals aren't the destination—they're the on-ramp. They help you escape the gravity of the comfort zone just enough to start building momentum. They also provide valuable insight into what truly matters to you. If you can't get excited about an Easy Goal related to a certain area of life, perhaps it's not the right goal for you. The beauty of Easy Goals is they make it easy to quit the goals you shouldn't have started in the first place, allowing you to discover where your real potential lies.

Chapter 3: Build Momentum with Middle Goals

Have you ever noticed how quickly motivation fades after the initial excitement of starting something new? This pattern plays out constantly—we sprint out of our comfort zone with tremendous enthusiasm, only to crash when we realize sustained effort is required. It's the classic tortoise and hare scenario, and most of us, whether we admit it or not, are rabbits at heart. The problem isn't just getting started; it's finding the right pace. Most people operate with only two gears: sprint or sleep. They either go all-in with excessive ambition or completely disengage when faced with the first obstacle. What's missing is the middle gear—the steady, consistent approach that actually creates lasting change. This is where Middle Goals become essential. Middle Goals are the bridge between fleeting enthusiasm and sustainable progress. When Taylor Reinhart decided to launch her photography business, her initial Easy Goals had helped her get started—researching cameras, taking a few test shots, creating a simple portfolio. But she needed something more substantial to build real momentum. "I created a Middle Goal of photographing three sessions per month for ninety days," she explains. "It wasn't overwhelming like trying to book full-time immediately, but it was enough to build real experience and start word-of-mouth marketing." A good Middle Goal has five key characteristics. First, it has a time frame of thirty to ninety days—long enough to see real progress but short enough to maintain focus. Second, it's flexible—providing multiple ways to make progress rather than a single rigid path. Third, it doesn't fall apart if you miss a day—it builds in forgiveness rather than perfectionism. Fourth, it encourages you to tweak your schedule slightly—requiring perhaps 3% of your week (about five hours) dedicated to your goal. Finally, it has patience built in—you can't binge-hustle your way through it; consistent effort is required. For Monica Lamb, her Middle Goal of walking one mile every day grew into something much more significant. "It started as just a mile, but over time it naturally expanded to two or three miles daily. I began tracking my steps, monitoring my nutrition, and ultimately lost ten pounds. What began as a simple Middle Goal evolved into a complete lifestyle shift." This pattern repeats across thousands of Middle Goal success stories. To create your own Middle Goal, look at what Easy Goal gave you the most satisfaction and consider how you might expand it over a longer timeframe. If writing 100 words daily was your Easy Goal, perhaps writing 1,000 words three times per week becomes your Middle Goal. The key is maintaining the right balance—challenging enough to create growth but reasonable enough to sustain momentum. Middle Goals work because they acknowledge a fundamental truth about human performance: we thrive in what the author calls the "Potential Zone"—that sweet spot between the Comfort Zone (where nothing changes) and the Chaos Zone (where burnout is inevitable). By deliberately operating in this middle ground, you build the consistency muscle that ultimately powers all significant achievements. Remember, consistency is never about perfection; it's about progress over time, adjusting as you go, and creating a sustainable rhythm that carries you forward.

Chapter 4: Reclaim Your Time with Intentional Focus

The modern world is designed to keep you from living up to your full potential. This isn't a conspiracy theory—it's simply economics. The business model of companies like Netflix, Instagram, and Facebook revolves around capturing your attention and converting it into ad revenue. With more than 58,000 employees at Facebook alone working to distract you, it's no wonder finding time for meaningful goals feels increasingly difficult. The fundamental challenge is that distraction technology has scaled faster than our ability to focus. Twenty years ago, the main distraction on a cell phone was a simple game called Snake. Today, our phones contain every form of entertainment ever created—millions of books, games, videos, and social connections, all competing for our limited attention. As the author observed while on vacation in Costa Rica, "If the phone is going to whup a Costa Rican ocean sunset, of course it's going to win against something challenging." The solution to this modern dilemma isn't another productivity system—it's a mindset shift about time itself. The key insight? Your imagination is bigger than your calendar. We always have more ideas, desires, and ambitions than hours in the day. This isn't a flaw; it's human nature. The path forward begins with answering one simple four-letter question: When? Susan Robertson completed her entire online degree during what most people consider wasted time—sitting in her car in the school pickup lane waiting for her children. "Not all at once, mind you," she explains. "Bit by bit, ride by ride, I knocked out my degree." Similarly, Jason Daily built his entire company while waiting for flights in Atlanta airport, turning frustration into opportunity. The most effective approach is to start by stealing back just fifteen minutes. Don't try to find ten hours for a new project—find the first fifteen minutes. There are 10,080 minutes in a week; surely you can reclaim fifteen of them. While this might seem insignificant, remember three things: First, fifteen is infinitely more than zero. Second, you can change the world in fifteen minutes (Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was only two minutes long). Third, momentum always starts with the first fifteen minutes. The minutes we miss are often hidden in the in-between moments of life. Jennifer Houg found her potential by creating a simple routine: "I get up 20 minutes earlier, take a full lunch break, and do 20 minutes before bedtime. This gives me 100 minutes per day to get it done." She discovered what many high performers know—minutes matter, and minute actions matter too. To apply this in your own life, first identify where your time is currently going. Then look for the in-between moments—waiting for meetings to start, during your commute, while food is cooking, or early in the morning before the household wakes up. Create a list of actions sized to fit these time blocks, from five-minute tasks to thirty-minute deep work sessions. This flexible approach ensures you can make progress regardless of how much time becomes available. The beautiful side effect of valuing your time this way is that you become increasingly protective of it. Stress, worry, and meaningless scrolling begin to feel like unworthy uses of your most precious resource. You don't become more disciplined through sheer willpower; you become more devoted to things that matter and naturally find yourself enjoying more discipline than you've ever known before.

Chapter 5: Find the Right Fuel for Lasting Motivation

What keeps you going when initial excitement fades? Most people rely on crisis or chaos as fuel—the panic of a looming deadline, the fear of failing, or the stress of external pressure. This approach works, but only for a season. Like rocket boosters that help launch a spacecraft but must be jettisoned once in orbit, crisis is effective for escaping the atmosphere of your current situation but useless for sustained exploration. The author discovered this painful truth when his wife delivered a sobering assessment: "Jon, you're a jerk during the two years when you write a book, and you're a jerk during the two years when you sell the book." His crisis-driven approach to productivity was damaging his most important relationships. To accomplish big goals without burning out or burning bridges, he needed to find more sustainable sources of motivation. Through studying thousands of high performers, the author identified four sustainable fuels that power long-term potential: Impact, Craft, Community, and Stories. These fuels correspond directly to the categories from the Best Moments List: accomplishments (impact), experiences (craft), relationships (community), and objects (stories). Scott Harrison's journey illustrates the power of impact as fuel. At 28, he was a successful New York nightclub promoter who "had it all"—dating models, driving a BMW, living the high life. Yet he felt spiritually and emotionally bankrupt. Seeking purpose, Scott volunteered on a hospital ship to Liberia, where he witnessed thousands seeking medical care with many turned away. Learning that 50% of disease in the country was caused by unsafe water, he found his mission. Returning to New York, he leveraged his nightclub skills to throw a fundraiser that became the foundation of Charity Water, which has now raised $700 million and brought clean water to nearly 15 million people across 29 countries. Craft—the joy of getting better at something regardless of external recognition—fuels people like Brendan Leonard, an ultrarunner who completed 52 marathons in a year. He'll never win the New York City Marathon, but that's not why he runs. "You won't ever find yourself telling your grandkids, 'I got 33,789th place that year,'" he explains. He runs for the satisfaction of the activity itself, echoing mountaineer George Mallory's famous reason for climbing Everest: "Because it's there." Community becomes fuel when relationships inspire consistency. The author confesses, "I don't want to run most Saturday mornings at 6:50 a.m." What gets him out the door isn't discipline but knowing his running group is waiting. "I know Rob Sentell will be sitting in my driveway at 6:50, we'll pick up Kevin Queen at 7:00, and meet Justin Johnson at 7:05." This social accountability transforms an obligation into an opportunity. Finally, stories fuel us when objects connect to deeper meaning. The author's analysis of Best Moments Lists revealed that objects alone rarely provide lasting motivation. However, objects that tell stories of feeling young, successful, inspired, cool, or connected can become powerful symbols that drive progress. To identify your most effective fuel sources, look at the distribution in your Best Moments List. If accomplishments dominated your list, impact will likely drive you forward. If experiences filled your pages, the joy of craft will sustain your efforts. Understanding your unique fuel mixture allows you to deliberately design goals that are naturally energizing rather than exhausting.

Chapter 6: Create Measurable Milestones for Progress

The reason most people compare themselves to others is surprisingly simple: your brain desperately wants to know if you're making progress in life. Without clear feedback on your own journey, your mind will inevitably look to external benchmarks—someone else's career, relationship, fitness level, or financial status—to gauge how you're doing. The problem? When you score your life against someone else's scorecard, you will always come up lacking. The solution isn't another lecture on avoiding comparison or practicing gratitude. It's giving your brain what it actually wants: a reliable scorecard that measures your unique progress. As the author discovered, "In the absence of a scorecard, your brain will use someone else's." David Trautman, CEO of Park National Bank, demonstrates this principle with his reading habit. Rather than vaguely aspiring to "read more," he maintains a beautifully formatted list of books organized into five categories. This visual representation serves as both motivation and measurement of his intellectual growth. His employees can even request any title from his list for free, ranging from "Green Eggs and Ham" in the selling category to "The Federalist Papers" in personal development. Creating your own scorecards starts with answering three simple questions. First, what will you measure? The most common metrics are time (hours spent writing), actions (vitamins taken), or results (weight lifted). Second, how long will you measure it? This could range from a single song (Jana Cinnamon completes emails before her chosen track ends) to a thirty-day Action Tracker or a year-long progress chart. Third, where will you measure it? This depends entirely on your personality—paper charts, digital apps, or creative visual representations all work. Grace Hagerty took an innovative approach to her decluttering goal: "When I needed to purge things, I weighed them as they went out of the house. I kept a chart. I put my house on a diet. I rid the house of several hundred pounds." This creative scorecard turned an overwhelming task into a measurable game with visible progress. The most surprising benefit of scorecards emerges when life circumstances change. Valerie faced the challenge of caring for an aging parent with dementia while also supporting an adult daughter with kidney failure. Katie struggled to balance a toddler and a new business with a husband working long hours. Both were comparing their current productivity to their pre-caregiving lives and feeling like failures. The solution wasn't working harder—it was creating new scorecards that reflected their current reality. To build your own scorecard system, start simple. The author tracks his goal of being kinder to his family using a traffic-light poster designed for six-year-olds, placing a green smile sticker for each act of kindness. As Marshall Goldsmith notes when criticized for tracking kindness toward his wife: "I'm not ashamed that I need a reminder to behave better. It would be shameful if I knew it and didn't do anything about it." Whether you use a wall chart, digital app, or creative visual, the power of a scorecard comes from making your progress visible and engaging with it regularly. This practice transforms vague aspirations into concrete achievements and keeps you focused on your own journey rather than someone else's. When someone asks if you're living up to your potential, you won't respond with platitudes or feelings—you'll have real evidence of your growth and clear direction for your future.

Summary

Throughout these pages, we've explored a revolutionary approach to potential—not as some distant, unattainable ideal, but as a practical gap between your vision and your reality that can be systematically closed through intentional goals. The journey begins by understanding what truly lights you up through your Best Moments List, continues by climbing the goal ladder from Easy to Middle to Guaranteed Goals, and sustains itself through finding the right fuel and measuring what matters. As the author powerfully reminds us, "Potential is never gone. It's never wasted. It's always waiting. It's always available. It's always willing to be redeemed at a moment's notice." Your path forward is clear: create your Best Moments List today. Identify just one big game you want to play, whether in your career, finances, relationships, health, or fun. Turn that game into a Guaranteed Goal, then work backward to create a Middle Goal and finally an Easy Goal you can start this week. Remember, you're no longer part of the 50 percent of people who feel they're leaving half their potential untapped. You're opening all your gifts, not just half. The time to begin is now.

About Author

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Jon Acuff

Jon Acuff is the New York Times Bestselling author of eight books, including Soundtracks, Your New Playlist, and the Wall Street Journal #1 bestseller Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done.When he’s not writing or recording his popular podcast, All It Takes Is a Goal, Acuff can be found on a stage, as one of INC's Top 100 Leadership Speakers. He's spoken to hundreds of thousands of people at conferences, colleges and companies around the world including FedEx, Nissan, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, Chick-fil-A, Nokia and Comedy Central. For over 20 years he's also helped some of the biggest brands tell their story, including The Home Depot, Bose, Staples, and the Dave Ramsey Team. Jon lives outside of Nashville, TN with his wife Jenny and two teenage daughters.

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