The 26 Principles, Revisited — #9: Aim Higher — What I Said, and What’s Actually Happening

Part of my “26 Principles, Revisited” series — checking my own math, nine months into the year I predicted.

Know this: if your goals feel ‘realistic,’ you are thinking too small.

Day 9 argued that incrementalism — 10% growth, 15% efficiency — is a path to irrelevance when a competitor is aiming for 10x. The discipline was moonshot thinking: radical extrapolation instead of safe, small bets.

The macro numbers back the ambition: AI infrastructure investment kept climbing through 2026 precisely because incremental bets don’t capture exponential markets. But the year also exposed the moonshot’s shadow side — overreach without a real plan is exactly how a project ends up in that 40%-defunded pile from Principle #7. Aim higher, sure. Just don’t confuse ambition with a business case.

Verdict: Held up, with an asterisk — the goal was right, but 2026 showed how many moonshots skipped the flight plan.

Next up: Principle #10, Collaborative Velocity — revisited.