How to Drink Bubble Tea with Barack Obama

In the last post, I laid out the #1 principle of The Resolution:

The more audacious your goals, the more likely you are to accomplish them.

How could this be?

Tim Ferriss identifies three reasons why big goals are better than small goals. (Read his article for some great examples.)

1. It never occurs to most people to try something truly ambitious.
2. More ambitious goals inspire you to more ambitious action. Mediocre goals inspire mediocre action.
3. There is far less competition for the top: most of the competition is fighting it out over mediocre ambitions.

So our primary strategy for achieving our goal is simply the audaciousness of the goal itself: Nobody else is asking Barack Obama out for Bubble Tea. And if you’re working for The President, reading through a list of dinner requests, handshake invitations, etc, etc, etc…Bubble Tea has got to stand out.

That’s our hope. The only possible way we could sit down with The President is if our goal is so ridiculously ambitious that it HAS to capture his attention.

Step #1: Make a really ambitious, audacious goal. Check.

Step #2: Start getting the President’s attention.

In order for this to happen, we’ve got to make sure everyone around him knows about us. Fortunately, Barack is setting out to be the most well-connected President in US history, and has set up the technology to do it. I started with a contact form on BarackObama.com.

Contacting Barack Obama

The question was: “How would you like to see this organization move forward in the months and years ahead? And how would you like to be engaged as a volunteer and organizer?”

My answer was: “I would like to get Bubble Tea with Barack Obama. He needs to enjoy the Bubble Tea experience, and I need to fulfill my resolution of getting more people, including the President, to experience Bubble Tea. The list of my resolutions is here…”

It’s a delicate line between being ambitious and coming off like a stalker, so I stepped carefully.

An important part of our approach is that everything we’re doing is out in the open, everything is transparent. Barack Obama has made it his ambition to run a more transparent government, and so it’s only fitting that when Barack Obama decides to start paying attention to our efforts, he’ll discover that we’ve been upfront and honest about our purpose the whole time. We want to have a memorable experience with an important figure in US history; and we have no ulterior motives, and are keeping nothing secret about this whole process.

My next stop was Change.gov, where I told my story: that I wanted to sit down with him and drink Bubble Tea. They nicely allowed me to upload a photo of some Bubble Tea with my story.

But the biggest coup of all was Barack Obama being on Twitter. This, of course, I couldn’t resist.

Barack Obama on Twitter: Would you get Bubble Tea with me sometime?

To recap: we’ve set a really ambitious resolution (Step #1), and let Barack Obama’s people know about it (Step #2).

Step #3: Spread the word. If you’d like to help us out with our task, or if you’d like to join us in drinking Bubble Tea with Barack Obama, there are a few things you can do.

1. Join our “I want to drink Bubble Tea with Barack Obama” and the “The Resolution Begins” Facebook groups.
2. Invite your friends to join these groups, and let them know about this website.
3. Tell Barack Obama you’d like him to get Bubble Tea with us at WhiteHouse.gov.
4. Stay tuned to The Resolution Begins for more details as they develop…