Know What You’re Aiming For#

The most tiring kind of busy is the kind where you cannot remember why you started.

Every January, I used to sit down with a fresh notebook and write a list of goals. Lose fifteen pounds. Read thirty books. Wake up at six every morning. Save a specific amount of money. The list was always long, always ambitious, and always abandoned by March. I would feel a familiar shame about my lack of discipline, then quietly put the notebook in a drawer until next January, when I would do it all over again.

It took me years to realize the problem was not willpower. The problem was that I was setting the wrong kind of goals.

Every item on my list was a finish line. A number to hit, a box to check, a destination to arrive at. And finish lines do something peculiar to the mind. Until you cross them, you feel behind. The moment you cross them, the satisfaction evaporates and you need a new one. It is like walking toward the horizon — always almost there, never actually there.

A friend of mine runs a small bakery. I once asked her what her goal was for the year. She thought about it and said, “I want to be the kind of person who makes things with care.” Not a revenue target. Not a number of new customers. A description of who she wanted to be. When I asked how she would know if she succeeded, she smiled. “Every time I shape a loaf and take my time with it instead of rushing, I have already succeeded. It happens twenty times a day.”

That conversation changed how I think about direction. The goals I used to write were all about outcomes — hit this number, reach this milestone, arrive at this place. But the goals that actually lighten the weight I carry are about identity. Not “what do I want to achieve” but “who do I want to become.”

The difference is not just philosophical. It changes how every ordinary day feels. When your goal is a finish line, every day you have not crossed it is a day of falling short. When your goal is a kind of person, every small choice that aligns with that person is a small success. You stop living in the gap between where you are and where you should be. You start living in the question: does this choice look like something that person would do?

I tried this with three words. I asked myself: if someone who knew me well had to describe the person I want to be, what three words would I hope they used? The words I landed on were steady, kind, and present. Not impressive words. Not the kind you put on a business card. But surprisingly useful.

When a request comes in that I do not want to accept but feel pressured to say yes to, I ask: would a steady person take this on? When I catch myself drafting a harsh reply, I ask: is this what a kind person would send? When I notice I have been staring at my phone for twenty minutes without seeing anything, I ask: is this what a present person would be doing?

I do not always choose well. But having the question available changes the texture of the day. Decisions that used to drain me because I had no framework for making them now have a simple filter. Not a perfect one. But a usable one.

The goals I wrote in January notebooks never lasted because they were destinations. Once I arrived, I needed somewhere else to go. But the three words are not a destination. They are a direction. A direction does not expire. You do not arrive at it and find yourself empty. You just keep walking, and every step that lines up with it feels like enough.

The question is not what do you want to accomplish this year. It is simpler than that. If you could be described in three words, what would you want them to be? Start there. Let those words sit with you for a few days. Then notice how they start showing up in the smallest choices — like a compass needle finding north without anyone telling it where to point.