For most of my life, I set goals and then tried hard to achieve them. I rarely succeeded.
At first, I thought the problem was that my goals weren’t audacious enough—so I made them bigger. That didn’t help much either. Then I realized I didn’t actually know how to set goals. A bit of research gave me several goal-setting frameworks, but none significantly improved my success rate. Fortunately, even the rare times I achieved my goals—and the effort I put into the ones I didn’t—were enough to carry me forward.
Unintentionally, though, I internalized failure. As my goals got bigger, so did the sub-goals. I was failing more often, and I hadn’t realized how much it affected me. In hindsight, I never accounted for the constant disappointment and sadness that came with failure, nor did I have a plan to deal with it.
That’s no way to live. If I wanted to achieve any of my audacious goals, I had to find a way to avoid being in a constant state of disappointment. That’s when I realized: goals are an unpleasant way to make and measure progress. Like a destination, they’re useful for setting direction—but the key is learning to enjoy the journey.
Once that insight hit me, things changed. The joy is in figuring out the systems and processes (habits!) that help me move forward. Then it’s just about taking those small steps—consistently.
Here’s one goal I had: I wanted to become a published writer. For the longest time, that meant getting my articles in a newspaper or magazine. Deep down, I believed I didn’t know how to write, and I was intimidated by the idea of putting words down anywhere. You can imagine how long I carried that disappointment.
Until one day, I asked myself: What would a writer do?
Simple—a writer would write daily. So I started journaling every day. Once I built that habit, I set up a blog and began publishing daily. Publishing—even on a personal blog that no one reads—has been a completely different ball game. My journaling practice helped, but I’ve still had to learn so many new things. And it’s been fun. More than anything, I now go to bed every night feeling proud that I published a post… even if no one reads it.