Stack Moments, Not Goals

Let’s be honest. In life, the only real finish line is death.

With that in mind, I must warn you about the way we’ve been taught to treat our goals — as ends in themselves.

Living Backwards is Not Living at All

When you do, then what happens after you graduate from college at the top of your class? What happens after you marry the love of your life? After you receive an Oscar for the best original screenplay?

Life goes on. Always.

But if these goals were ends in themselves, then you end up in a kind of living death — a period of emptiness, of purposeless, and of immense depression. You catch yourself saying, what now? Have I peaked? More and more, you think of the past. “God,” you say to yourself while taking a long work lunch, “it felt so fucking good crossing the graduation stage and thinking about the hundreds of hours spend pouring over research materials in the library.” Life after college / marriage / professional accolade is thus spent stuck in a reflection. Which is not the definition of living.

The Goal Itself Has Little Value

I’m not suggesting that you never make goals. As long as your goals come from a place of meaning, then they can propel us forward (a critical component to living). But at the end of the day, the goal itself has little value.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve set myself a goal, worked incredible hard at achieving that goal, and then ended up in a better, albeit different place then what I had set out to do. Take for example the college I attended. I was dead set on going to a small liberal arts college because it was the type of place I had flourished in previously. After spending countless late nights with this one goal in mind, I was rejected by all nine liberal arts colleges that I had painstakingly applied to. I felt gutted. The only school that accepted me was Columbia, where, I kid you not, I had begrudgingly applied and could not see myself going to. But I did. And my life changed because of it. While I didn’t achieve my specific goal of attending a liberal arts college, I ended up having some of the richest experiences of my life.

So yes, make goals that matter. But then immediately set those goals aside and focus on this moment right now. Then focus on stacking those moments — on taking just one more step. Then once you take that step, focus on taking one more. And then one more.

The Finish Line is Limiting

When I’m out for a long run, I sometimes catch myself thinking about the finish line — my front door. This has two negative consequences:

(1) It makes me feel like I’m stuck in the mud, like I’m making little-to-no progress. I check my watch. Fifteen minutes and one and a half miles still to go. I suddenly become aware of how tired I am. My muscles burn. This makes my front door feel far away, which creates a place in my mind where I become susceptible to believing myself when I say, “I can’t possibly take another step.”

(2) It limits how far I can really go. When anyone crosses the finish line, then by definition they have no reason to continue any further. Break out the bubbly. They have made it. But I have a philosophy in life: I can always go one step further. And that one step becomes one more. And before I know it, I’ve gone around the block not once but twice.

It’s human nature to focus on the goal, especially when we face resistance. So I’ve created a technique that I use almost daily. It’s easiest to explain this with running.

Set Micro Goals

I will have the macro goal — say three miles in under thirty minutes. Then, when I start feeling exhausted and find myself focusing too much on how far I am from home, I will give myself a micro goal — say reaching a certain street not too far ahead. I will tell myself that if I want, I can stop once I reach that street. But then once I reach the street, I invariably tell myself, “Oh hell, I can go a bit further.” I then give myself a new micro goal. Before I know it, I reach my front door when at one point I never thought that was possible. And then sometimes I say, “Well, shit. I can go around the block just once. Right?”

I’m sure there’s a neurological reason for why this works so effectively, one that no doubt has to do with dopamine, the molecule of more. But I’ll leave that for another time. Instead, I’d like to live you with one more anecdote.

One Final Takeaway

When asked what differentiates those who pass the Navy Seal training and those who do not, a Navy Seal vet of twenty plus years admitted it was not a matter of strength or will power but instead a simple technique. Those who make it through what’s often deemed the hardest training in the world master the art of telling themselves, “just one more.”