17 Dec 2025 · 6 min
Brian Johnson explains how to break big goals into tiny steps using the oil barrel metaphor: cross the desert one barrel at a time. He connects this to Kaizen, gradualism, and expanding your edge, drawing on ideas from Brian Tracy, Tony Robbins, and George Mumford.
Hey, this is Brian with a quick note before we jump into today's show. If you haven't signed up for the Optymyze premium membership yet, A, what are you waiting for? And B, you can now get the first 30 days of optimizing for free. Just cruise on over to Optimize me and sign up. Over 10,000 people now start their days with Optymyze so they can actualize their potential, including best selling authors, leading entrepreneurs and even NCAA championship teams. Two of them. So again, 30 days of free optimizing at Optimize Me. If you're already a member, thanks for your support. Now for the show, You're listening to Optimize with Brian Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another micro class. This one is on oil barrels. It's inspired by Brian Tracy's Eat that Frog. We've been talking a lot about breaking your goals down into micro goals. Here's another way for us to look at it. Here you are, you're an adventurer like Brian Tracy was back in the day. He decided that he was going to go across the Sahara Desert was so bleak, white ink didn't even show up on it, right? So 500 miles of nothing. He said it was just flat land, yellow, all exactly the same as far as you can see. Not a blade of grass, not even a fly. Right? Well, how do you navigate that? Well, back in the day, this is in Algeria, the French came up with this idea to put 50 gallon black 50 gallon oil barrels, right? Five kilometers apart, which happened to be about the distance from horizon to horizon. So if you're going across this 500 mile journey into infinite sand, all you had to do was get to the next oil barrel, get to that oil barrel and then what would you see? Well, you'd start your day and you'd see this next oil barrel. And then in any given day, as you go across your little journey and you're sitting here, you see two oil barrels, the one you're going toward and the one you came from. And he said that's all you need to do. You can cross the broadest desert, 500 miles of desolation, one oil barrel at a time. This is what we talked about with Kaizen. We talked about it with which is constant and never ending. Improvement is another way to describe it. That's how Tony Robbins describes it, right? Which is basically synonymous with Kaizen. Gradualism is another way we've described this, right? You just gradually get better. George Mumford describes it as romancing Your discomfort zone. And he said the exact same thing. He said, you go to your edge. Here you are, you go to your edge and at that point you go to your next edge. And then you go to your next edge and you progressively expand horizon to horizon to horizon. And you do extraordinary things. But all we need to do is get to the next oil barrel. We don't need to stress ourselves out with crossing the whole 500 miles at once. Just get to the next oil barrel. So with you and your goals, map it out. This is your big goal you're really excited about. What are your little incremental steps that you can take to achieve the level of success you want to achieve? Oil barrels. Let's cross the desert one at a time. Hope you enjoyed. Look forward to sharing more soon. Have another awesome day. See ya. Isn't it a bit odd that we went from math to science to history, but somehow missed the class on how to live? For some wacky reason, optimal living 101 never made the schedule. Of course it's too late to go back and change that and you're too busy to read full time to catch yet. If you're like us, you're all about optimizing your life and actualizing your potential. So imagine this. Imagine having someone read the best books on optimal living and pulling out the big ideas that can truly change your life. You know those sections you asterisk and underline and mark all up? Then imagine that guy me, connecting those ideas to other great books in helping you apply them to your life today. Well, that's what I do with something we call Philosopher's Notes where I break down each great book into a simple 6 page PDF, 20 minute MP3 and 10 minute Philosopher's Notes TV episode. Then imagine me taking the absolute best big ideas from those great books and sharing them with you in fun, inspiring, super practical optimal living 101 classes on stuff like purpose 101, confidence 101, business 101, meditation 101, that sort of thing. You got a personal trainer? I'm kind of like your personal philosopher. Ancient wisdom plus Modern science plus Common sense plus Virtue plus Mastery plus Fun. That's what our optimized membership program is all about. We'd love to have you join us. Check us out at BrianJohnson. Me join.
