Because playing small is far more exhausting than dreaming outrageously.
A confession please.
For years, I believed 10% growth was responsible. Adult. Boardroom-approved. The kind of number that doesn’t make the corner office leaders look up from their perennial ledger of lack( or choke on their cold brew).
10% felt safe. Sensible. Sensationally…uninspiring.
Then recently I stumbled upon a slim, dangerous little book by Price Pritchett called You². And it quietly punched a hole through everything I thought I knew about ambition, effort, and scale.
His provocation was simple—and explosive:
10X goals are often easier than 10% goals.
At first glance, this sounds like motivational speaker madness.
At second glance, it’s operational genius.
At third glance, it’s deeply uncomfortable—because it exposes how addicted we are to incremental thinking.
Why Your Brain Hates 10% (But Loves 10X)
Neuroscience time, but I’ll keep it short.
When you set a 10% goal, your brain rummages through its existing toolkit. “Okay, work harder, optimize this, tweak that.” You’re in incremental mode. You’re competing with everyone else who has the same toolkit, fighting for the same scraps. Remember, the brain is the laziest organ in the body.
It’s a Red Ocean strategy in Blue Ocean clothing.
When you set a 10X goal, your brain short-circuits. It cannot use existing methods. The math doesn’t work. So it starts asking different questions:
- “What if we didn’t do it this way at all?”
- “Who’s already solved a version of this in another industry?”
- “What are we assuming that might not be true?”
This is why Elon Musk didn’t say “let’s make rocket launches 10% cheaper.” He said “let’s make them 90% cheaper by landing and reusing them.” Absurd? Yes. Impossible? Well, watch a Falcon 9 land on a drone ship in the middle of the ocean and then let us talk about impossible.
The Tyranny of the Reasonable
The truth about incremental goals that does not get airtime is this: They’re soul-crushingly boring.
And when something bores you, you sabotage it. Not consciously. But your brain—that magnificent pattern-recognition machine—knows the difference between “slightly better” and “holy-shit-this-changes-
Price Pritchett nailed this in his cult classic booklet You² (pronounced “You Squared”- pl see book cover above). In barely 40 pages, he demolishes the myth that bigger goals require proportionally bigger effort. Instead, he argues that quantum leaps require different thinking, not just more thinking.
But let’s get dirty( unreasonable) with some examples, shall we?
The Curiosity Loop: What Happens When You Go Big?
Now you’re wondering: What about regular businesses? Regular people?”
Fair question. Let’s talk about Lijjat Papad.
Seven Gujarati housewives in 1959. Starting capital: ₹80 borrowed. Goal: Financial independence in a society that didn’t want them working.
Did they say, “Let’s increase our household income by 10%”?
Hell no.
They said, “Let’s build an organization owned entirely by women workers.” Today, Lijjat is a ₹1,600 crore enterprise employing 43,000 women across India. Those seven women didn’t incrementally improve their situation. They invented a new category.
The Japanese Salaryman Who Quit Climbing Ladders for Skydiving
Japan’s karoshi culture—death by overwork—is infamous. Enter Hiroshi Mikitani, Rakuten’s founder. In 1997, he didn’t aim for 10% more sales at his job. He quit, bet his life savings on an internet startup when dial-up was for nerds, targeting a $100 billion empire. Today? Rakuten’s a beast. 10% increments? He’d still be filing TPS reports in a cubicle, keeling over at 55. Hiroshi didn’t tweak; he torched the ladder. Think about this: What if your next “increment” is actually a trapdoor?
ISRO vs NASA Budgets
ISRO’s Mars Orbiter Mission cost less than a Hollywood sci-fi movie. It is common knowledge now.
That wasn’t jugaad. That was 10X clarity.
Instead of asking: “How do we match NASA?”
They asked:
“How do we achieve the mission with radically fewer resources?”
10X goals force focus, not excess.
Netflix Didn’t Beat Blockbuster by Being 10% Better
Blockbuster tried:
- Better stores
- More titles
- Lower late fees (eventually)
Netflix asked a 10X question: “What if movies never required a store at all?”
That question made stores irrelevant.
10X thinking doesn’t compete.
It changes the game so competition looks silly.
The Tyranny of 10% Thinking
A 10% goal asks a deceptively hard question:
“How do we do what we’re already doing… but slightly better?”
Which usually translates to:
- More meetings
- Longer decks
- Extra pressure on already exhausted teams
- Marginal tweaks dressed up as transformation
It keeps the same people,
the same processes,
the same mental models
—and expects a different outcome.
That’s not growth. That’s cardio.
10% goals trap us inside the prison of existing constraints.
They force optimisation, not imagination.
Why 10X Blows the Doors Open
So what happens when you ask a 10X question:
“What would this look like if we had to grow ten times?”
Suddenly:
- Old assumptions collapse
- Sacred cows panic
- PowerPoint hides in the corner
Because 10X cannot be achieved by working harder.
It demands working differently.
10X goals don’t ask for more effort.
They ask for reinvention.
And paradoxically, that’s why they’re easier.
The Psychological Truth(in Hiding)
Here’s the part where most leadership miss the wood for the trees:
10% goals are emotionally heavy.
- You feel the grind
- You feel the pressure
- You feel the incrementalism sucking your soul dry
10X goals are emotionally liberating.
- You give yourself permission to break rules
- You stop defending the past
- You start designing the future
As Price Pritchett says in You²:
“Quantum leaps aren’t about more effort. They’re about different thinking.”
And different thinking is lighter than constant pushing.
But What About Failure?
I know you’re thinking, “this is all very inspiring, but what about risk? What about failure?”
That is an excellent question. And sorry to disappoint you: You’re already failing.
Staying in the 10% lane means you’re competing with everyone else in the 10% lane. Your odds of success aren’t actually higher—they’re lower, because you’re in a crowded field fighting for scraps.
Plus, here’s the mind numb: When you aim for 10% and hit 8%, you’ve failed. When you aim for 10X and hit 3X, you’re a hero.
The risk isn’t in going big. The risk is in thinking small in a world that rewards big thinking.
Why Leaders Fear 10X (But Secretly Crave It)
10X exposes:
- Legacy mindsets
- Power structures
- Comfort disguised as caution
Which is why organisations say they want transformation but fund incrementalism.
10X doesn’t fail because it’s unrealistic. It fails because it’s honest.
In Closing, The Takeaway
10X goals are easier than 10% goals because they force you out of competitive markets and into creative ones.
They give you energy, attract better talent, and paradoxically reduce risk by reducing competition.
You’re not competing against everyone anymore.
You’re competing against what’s possible.
And what’s possible is always bigger than what’s reasonable.
Now go do something unreasonable.
Further Reading
You² (You Squared) by Price Pritchett – A 40-page manifesto on quantum leaps in performance. Read it in an hour. Think about it for years. Available on Amazon and worth every dollar | rupee.