Why you need to consistently add to your goals, instead of subtracting from them, contrary to what most productivity experts tell you.

You want to enjoy the journey. You think that focusing on your goals will make time fly away without you feeling good except for a few seconds after you reach a certain big goal. This mindset is one of the major causes of your suffering. You have been misled terribly. I can’t imagine many examples of damaging beliefs or mindsets that have the potential of leading to worse effects than focusing on the journey or the process instead of focusing on your goals, which only someone who has the exact opposite of your best interest in mind could indoctrinate you with. This is a mindset that has the capacity to mislead you your whole life like no other. You tend to think of focusing on your goals as opposed to focusing on the journey to be something that means you will only focus on a certain massive goal that will only come to existence twenty years into the future. And in return for reaching that goal, you will have to sacrifice twenty years in order to get to it. Twenty years of labor and hard work, while getting nothing in return. You heard wrong. You have been misled big time.

Ever heard of dividing your big goals into smaller ones which will make them easier and less challenging to accomplish? Ever heard of the notion that when trying to establish a new habit, it’s better to start small, in order to get used to doing the challenging activity first, before moving on to attempting to do the whole thing on the regular? There are goals everywhere. You just didn’t notice them because you were heavily indoctrinated.

Okay, so at this point I hopefully managed to convince you that goals don’t have to be something huge that can only exist decades later in the future. Why is that important? Why should you care? What difference does this make? Where exactly have we been misled?

You can have ten goals that you can accomplish today, not in ten years. There’s nothing wrong with that. However, this is not an attempt to convince you to do something that you hate for a living. This is not an attempt to make you give up on your dreams, following your passion, or doing what you really want or love. At all.

The part where you’ve been misled isn’t in the fact that goals can be smaller than you think, or that goals don’t have to be too far from your reach, and can only be something that can only happen in the future, after so many years of labor and hard work. It’s in the fact that focusing on the journey is somehow better than being focused only on your goals. That is insanely wrong on so many levels I can’t count. Nothing exists outside accomplishing goals. There is no journey. Whatever you think is part of the journey is a goal in disguise. If for example you are taking a shower, and you decided to enjoy the shower a little bit longer because it feels good, that is not journey. That is having the goal of enjoying the shower in addition to the goal of cleaning your body. If anything, you’ve just increased your goals. You’ve added to your goals, instead of subtracting from them. You didn’t focus on the journey of taking a shower by enjoying it a little bit longer. You decided to add the goal of enjoying the shower to the already existing goal of getting the process of cleaning your body over with so that you can go do what you really want to do today. So now you have two goals, cleaning your body, and enjoying the shower in the meantime. As you can see here, I wasn’t exaggerating when I said nothing exists outside of goals. There is no journey to enjoy. There is no journey that exists somewhere that you can only start to experience and really enjoy once you decrease your focus on your goals and start directing it a little bit toward smelling the roses. Focusing on the journey will not lead to something that cannot be reached by increasing the number of your goals. Focusing on the journey can only be accomplished through stopping the entire process of pursuing goals altogether. You can only focus on the journey at the expense of your goals. You can only focus on the journey through decreasing the number of your goals. You can only focus on the journey by sacrificing the desire to reach any goal you can have or set. You can only focus on the journey instead of focusing on your goals, never simultaneously. You can only focus on the journey through abandoning the pursuit of your goals. You can only focus on the journey through abandoning the entire process of goal setting altogether. You can only focus exclusively on the journey through abandoning the entirety of the process of wanting or desiring to accomplish any goals whatsoever. You either focus on the journey, or focus on getting things done. You cannot have both, even if you wanted to. And there’s nothing that cannot be turned into a goal that you can desire and attempt to accomplish or achieve. Nothing. Not even the tiniest or smallest of activities or habits. Even eating lunch today is a goal. Just take a look at your to-do list and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Ultra long-term goals are not the only goals there is out there. There can be micro goals and very small goals every step of the way as well. You just overlook them because they told you to. You can only focus on the journey through no longer caring about your goals or accomplishing any goals whatsoever.

I am not against rest. I divided the recovery process into regeneration, and absolute rest. Both of which do not include sleeping every day until fully rested, no matter what. You need to be yourself, before you can try to live, and you cannot do that while feeling exhausted all the time. You can’t pour from an empty cup. I understand that. But life isn’t about resting or avoidance of burnout. It’s about being alive. It’s not dying you need to be afraid of. It’s not having lived in the first place. Plan your life accordingly.

Reward is important. By wandering around aimlessly all the time, you will end up missing the entirety of it.

However, not all rewarding behaviors and activities are created equal.

Some are more rewarding than others. Seek them out, and give them your full focus.