A 10x goal takes whatever target you’d normally set and multiplies it by ten before you start planning — on the idea that a goal that big can’t be reached with your current approach, so it forces you to find a genuinely better one.
The idea
Incremental goals invite incremental thinking: if you want 10% more, you keep doing what you’re doing, just harder. A 10x goal makes the old approach obviously insufficient, which pushes you to question assumptions, drop low-value work, and look for entirely different methods. The claim isn’t that 10x is always achievable — it’s that aiming for it surfaces better strategies than aiming for a “reasonable” increase ever would.
When to use it
- Annual or quarterly goal-setting, when last year’s plan is just “more of the same.”
- When a team or individual feels stuck making only incremental progress.
- Early in a project, before the plan has hardened around the current way of doing things.
How to apply it
- Take an existing goal and multiply it by ten.
- Ask what would have to be true, or different, for that goal to be achievable at all.
- Identify what current work would need to be eliminated or delegated to make room.
- Build the plan around the new approach, not the old one scaled up.
Watch out for
- 10x goals without a capacity or resource check can produce burnout instead of breakthroughs.
- Treating “10x” as a slogan rather than an actual planning exercise.
Related models
- Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) — the organizational version of the same idea.
- Goal setting — the general practice this model deliberately breaks from.
- 4DX — a framework for executing a small number of ambitious goals once set.
Sources
Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy, “10x Is Easier Than 2x”; Grant Cardone, “The 10X Rule.”