Fitts' Law, and the Beauty of Big Goals

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.