It Is Okay to Be Unrealistic
The biggest limits are often the ones we accept before we have properly tested them.
I was listening to the updated version of Tony Robbins’ Awaken the Giant Within when he said that great leaders are rarely realistic.
That immediately resonated with me.
“Let’s be realistic” sounds sensible, but it can also be a convenient way to limit ourselves before we have even tried. We assume we know what is possible based on what we have done before, how long things used to take, or what people around us believe is reasonable.
But we often have no idea what we are actually capable of.
My own life right now is not particularly realistic. I have a new baby and a four-year-old at home. I recently moved into a demanding new engineering leadership role. At the same time, during nights and weekends, I have been building and preparing to launch more than five original games, despite never having worked professionally in game development.
I am not saying that as a productivity flex. Some of those games may succeed and some may go nowhere.
The point is that I would never have believed this was possible a few years ago.
AI has changed what one person or a small team can attempt. It has allowed me to move between product thinking, design, engineering, testing, visuals, audio, and release work without every step requiring a separate team or months of coordination.
Things that were unrealistic before may simply be ambitious now.
This is also why I encourage people on my teams to aim higher than the safe corporate checkbox. If you choose a goal you already know you can achieve, you may complete 100 percent of it, but you probably will not discover anything new about yourself.
If you aim for 200 and reach only 80 percent, you still get to 160.
That does not mean leaders should set impossible expectations and punish people for missing them. Aspirational goals are different from commitments. The point is to create space for people to test the edge of what they can do.
Powerlifting works the same way. You do not discover your one-rep maximum by repeatedly lifting a weight you already know you can handle. You prepare properly, then you attempt something you might not complete.
You may fail. But you also might discover that you are stronger than you thought.
Unrealistic dreams can create energy, curiosity, and the kind of challenge that leads to flow state in the age of AI. They pull us beyond the limits we have accepted without ever properly testing them.
Of course, ambition still needs judgment. Some constraints are real. Some ideas will fail. Being unrealistic does not mean ignoring evidence.
It means refusing to treat assumptions as facts.
Aim high. Try the thing that feels slightly unreasonable. Give yourself permission to fail without turning the attempt into a failure.
You do not know what you are capable of until you test it.
It is okay to be unrealistic.
Joonas