Mike Bifulco: This is tiny improvements.
I'm Mike bifocal.
At its heart fits laws.
Simple.
The time required to move your mouse.
Cursor to a target.
Onscreen is a function of the distance
to the target as well as its size.
The further away in smaller, the target
is the longer it takes to reach it.
Therefore the closer and larger the
target, the faster it is to reach it.
It makes intuitive sense.
This is the reason that the actions
you take in phone apps are on large
buttons near where your thumb is.
It's why the X to close a window is
at the top right corner of the screen.
It's also why it's so hard to click on
a tiny link on a website and why you
have to focus more to move your cursor
to the right spot in a text document.
In other words, big well-placed
targets are easier to hit
than small, far away targets.
You see where I'm going with this yet?
Tiny improvements in big goals.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you
that it's easy to reach your goals.
No matter what you're after it's
going to take time, effort and focus.
But I do think it's easier
to reach your goals.
If you set some audacious targets
and work towards them with
small, consistent improvements.
when I set out to start publishing
developer articles, I made a list of
50 people from the industry who I would
be thrilled to see reading my words.
This was my target, the bullseye.
I was aiming for.
These weren't necessarily people I
knew, but there were people who I
admire and who I thought would be
interested in what I had to say.
Every time I brainstorm new topics.
I'd try to write for
the people on that list.
Was it reasonable to think that
I'd get any of these 50 people
to read what I have to say?
Probably not.
But the audacity of the goal
helped me to focus on writing
for that specific audience.
And that's truly what
helped me to write better.
From there.
I started publishing a dev tutorial
a week as an article on my site.
This was before my newsletter
tiny improvements existed.
I would thoughtfully share my work
through Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn,
and dev to, to the appropriate
audiences as I could find them.
And when the context was right,
I would reply to posts from
those 50 people on my list.
And I'd try to be helpful and
add value to the conversation.
And, you know, what.
It was less than three months before
I had one of the people on that list
read and respond to one of my articles.
It was on Twitter, which was
honestly a different place back then.
Fast-forward to today.
And after years of consistent effort,
I've gotten better at writing and
built a small audience for myself.
From time to time.
I even get messages from friends
that they've seen my articles
shared by people they follow,
which is a pretty cool feeling.
Recently, I got a message
from a friend after Sebastian.
Lorber published an article of mine
in his newsletter this week in react.
He was kind enough to
also post it on Twitter.
And it got a reply from Joel hooks,
who is the creator of egghead.io.
I've been learning from both
of these guys for years.
And honestly, it was a great feeling to
see the two of them talking about my work.
Joel, even got in touch with me afterwards
to talk about creating something together,
which I would love to do someday.
Anyway, coming back to the core of
this, my initial goal was to get one
of these 50 special people to read
and respond to one of my articles.
And when they did, it was a great feeling.
The surprising side effect was that I had
also built a growing audience of people
who are interested in what I have to say.
And I was helping people all over
the world who were trying to learn
the same things that I was learning.
This is why I love Fitz law.
It's a reminder that big targets
are easier to hit than small ones.
If I had set out to get one person
to read my articles, I probably would
have stopped after the first few weeks
it would have been infuriating, but
because I had a big goal, I was able to
focus on small, consistent improvements
that would get me closer to it.
At least.
So it boils down to this.
When you set goals for yourself,
make them big, make them audacious.
And try to do more than
you think you can do.
You might be surprised how
far along that path you get.
