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Beware the Noble Obstacle
A noble obstacle is what perfectionism throws at you next if you deal with the
hiding places. It’s the Very Good Reason you cannot pursue your goal.

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hiding places. It’s the Very Good Reason you cannot pursue your goal.
Perfectionism will tell you, “If you’re going to do it, you might as well do it
right.” And when we leave the idea of “right” undefined, it tends to get
complicated, usually in one of two ways.
In the first kind of noble obstacle, perfectionism sneakily tells you that you
cannot move toward your goal until you do something else: “I can’t do X until
Y.” In the second kind, perfectionism tells you that reaching your goal could
actually produce bad results or make you a bad person.
Would-be entrepreneurs often express fear that they’ll become workaholics
if they start a business. They’re one step away from a messy divorce if they dare
make a go at their goal and that’s just not worth it. Better to play it safe and just
think about what they could have done if they really wanted to. They’re not
avoiding the business, they’re protecting the sanctity of the marriage. How
noble.
A noble obstacle is the reason Bill is never going to clean his garage.
Bill knows he will never meet his goal. Every time he uses the small travel
paths through the suburban rubble, he is well aware of the fact that he will most
likely be dead before this garage is cleaned. He probably doesn’t think this when
he is getting a drink from the fridge because that’s pretty dark, but it’s true.
I don’t blame him. The one time I cleaned our garage I found a foot-long
Norwegian wharf rat, which was weird because we didn’t live near a wharf or
Norway. They’re also called the “brown rat” or the “we need to sell this house”
rat. It would be great if your garage rat was more The Secret of NIMH and less
steal your car radio, but it never works out that way.
I don’t know whether Bill has rats, but I know he can’t announce to his wife
that he will never clean his garage.
Instead, when pressured by her to clean it, he says, “Great idea! I will. Let’s
have a garage sale first!”
On the surface, this feels a bit like the best step toward the completion of the
goal.
He didn’t argue, he actually agreed to the project, enthusiastically so. Not
only does he consent to it, he adds a way they can make money through the
project. That’s a win-win right there.
But his wife knows what he is doing.
Bill is not taking the first step toward cleaning the garage. he is employing a
noble obstacle.
At the heart of it, a noble obstacle is an attempt to make your goal harder
than it has to be so you don’t have to finish, but can still look respectable.

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Writing a fantasy basketball newsletter instead of writing a business book is
a hiding place.
Deciding that you can’t write your book until you’ve read the top one
hundred business books of all time is a noble obstacle.
Bill and his wife haven’t had a garage sale once in the twenty years they’ve
been married. He’s never wanted to have one. He doesn’t go to them on the
weekends. He never even mentioned the idea until he was pushed into a corner.
At that moment he created a noble obstacle.
Think about the myriad steps a garage sale adds to the real intent of the
project: an empty garage. Here are just a few of the extra tasks:
1. Pick a perfect day for the sale, checking the weather, your business travel
plans, and your kids’ soccer schedule.
2. Review your HOA to make sure there aren’t any weird rules about garage
sales.
3. Make signs advertising the sale:
WHARF RAT FOR A GOOD HOME
.
4. Hang the signs up.
5. Research garage sales on Pinterest so that your sale looks appealing, like
a cake pop.
6. Clean the garage so that you actually know what you’re selling.
7. Sort items into “sell,” “throw away,” and “keep.”
8. Decide on prices for all the items.
9. Label the items with price tags.
10. Display the items in your driveway.
11. Go to the bank to make sure you have enough spare change for the two
people on the planet who still pay with cash.
12. Set up a Square account so that you can take debit cards.
13. Hold the sale.
14. Negotiate with the weirdos who regularly shop at yard sales.
15. Sort through the items that didn’t sell.
16. Replace any leftover items in the garage.
What was a one-step goal—clean garage—turned into a sixteen-step project.
Is it any wonder this noble obstacle will ensure that Bill never actually does
anything with the garage? His wife would have been happy if he’d gutted the
garage with a flamethrower, but in the face of such a wonderfully noble obstacle,
her hands are tied.

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her hands are tied.
Bill is not alone. We all have our noble obstacles. You have some, too.