Goal Setting
16 September 2026
After reading an article recently about the importance of writing quickly, I've decided to spend less time thinking about what to write and just try to get my thoughts onto the page twice a week and see what happens. Much of the advice you hear from essayists and book authors about how much time they spend editing and revising makes a lot more sense once you're more experienced and know what to look for. For me right now, I think it's more important that I just put in the reps.
The other day I finished a notebook that I've had for the past 6 years. I've only been consistent about journaling recently, but there were a few journal entries from each year starting in March of 2020 (right at the start of Covid). As I went through some of my old entries to scan and back them up digitally, I was struck both by how much I've changed and how most of the things I've accomplished were not what I predicted six years ago. Throughout the years, the lists of goals I wrote down at New Year's remain remarkably consistent—and unachieved. The goals I wrote down had very little in common with what ended up mattering and what I actually did.
On the one hand, you could look at this as neutral. If I still achieved the most important goals, why does it matter that they were different from the ones I wrote down each year? Based on my reflections each year, I think the reason is to remove some of the self-loathing that is inevitable when you look back and see the same unachieved goals year after year. I've gotten to the point now where I can let most of them go and realize that they're not truly important to me, but 3 years ago I still hadn't moved past those goals from 2020 and was beating myself up for not having achieved them.
I think that is a major problem with most New Year's Resolution type activities. Often people set goals for themselves that they kind of want to do, but they haven't fully thought through what it will take to achieve them. The problem arises when the guilt for not achieving your goals outweighs how much you actually value achieving them. For some goals that I've written over and over again—like being consistent with writing—I'm just now to the point where it makes sense in my life. When academics were still my principle focus, setting that as a goal for myself was not being honest with where my priorities lay. It has been a goal of mine for years, but for the first few years of it being a goal, it was not a reasonable goal to have considering my time constraints. Much of what I do feel proud of was related to the things that I did consistently for years, things that became such a part of my identity that I didn't think to write resolutions about them.
For me at least, my resolutions usually focus on people I want to become or cool things I want to do. But I don't think about all the details of that person. I think "it would be cool to run a 5 minute mile" without thinking about the daily commitment to training, the early morning runs, and dedication that accompanies it. If I were to honestly think about all of these factors, I'd realize that becoming that type of person is not worth the sacrifice to me. Instead of looking about types of people to become, look instead at elements of your existing life to modify. Don't think about the end goal when you evaluate your past and plan for your future, think about what day-to-day changes you can make to turn you into a version of that person right now. Because fundamentally, you don't become a runner by being able to run a 5 minute mile, you become a runner by running every day. Note: I have since let go of this as a goal because I honestly don't care enough.
Another moment where I have this same realization is when I find myself being jealous of other people. I once heard someone say that you cannot be jealous of just one aspect of another person, you have to take every part of them that comes with it. Due to limited time, resources, etc., you cannot take one person's athletic achievement, another's academic achievement, another's relationship, and so on. When I consider all aspects of those same people I'm envious of, I usually find that it is not worth the trade, that I wouldn't trade their whole lives for my own. When you think of goals in the same way as being envious of a specific aspect of another person—only looking at the upside, not the price—you create unnecessary negative feelings when those goals are not achieved. Your current life is the product of your true values up to this point. To affect your future you must fundamentally change the beliefs, priorities, values that brought you to where you are. By looking at goal setting in this way instead, I usually realize that most goals are the equivalent of being jealous of one aspect of another person—not something I truly care about.