The Harder You Grasp the More it Slips Away - Goals
For a while I was keeping a daily goal journal, sometimes two or three times daily. I would struggle and struggle while jotting down furiously everything I was doing to try and make things happen. Every month, there would be imaginary goals that I would set that would slip further and further away. It grew to be frustrating, but I 'trusted in the system.'
At the same time, there was one goal I never journaled about: running a marathon. That one, I simply set an alarm for early in the morning or late in the evening, threw on a pair of running shoes, and headed out the door. I did this consistently on a schedule. When a run was poor, I didn't try to analyze the heck out of it, I took a look and said, "it rained," or "I slept poorly the night before." When I ran a bit faster, I celebrated.
Between these two methods, you can probably guess which yielded the results I wanted.
The goals I set for learning new things or producing results at my company never got met. I found myself miserable even sitting down to do them.
In May, I crushed a marathon. I beat my own PR and made the 80-90th percentile for men my age. I loved the heck out of it. Was it easy? No. Was it fun. Absolutely
I'm trying to apply those same lessons to my other goals. I didn't get into the business of building because I wanted to make a dozen sales or brag on LinkedIn. I got into the business of building because at one point I remember sitting in my dorm room and realized the thing that got me excited to get me out of my bed was projects I was working on I got to share with people, who then used them to solve problems in their own life.
That loop of build, help, and learn was addictive. I got into it because I found it fulfilling.
What I learned is pursue fulfillment and throw away systems that make you feel productive for systems that make you productive.