Or, they don't for me. If I say I'm going to Write for the next three hours, the connotation is that I'm going to force myself to sit in a hard wooden chair, painstakingly typing words as they come to me. If I say I'm going to run for two hours, it's basically me enduring shin splints and heavy breathing for a tortuous period of time. If I want to work on an essay for an hour for class, I know I'll be glancing at the clock every other minute.

Time is clearly one of the most valuable resources we all have, but for some reason, basing our achievements on time never seems to work. I think it's something to do with the nature of time—namely, that it passes regardless of what we do. While we might tell ourselves we're on the road to mastery by spending X hours per day on a certain activity, really all we're saying is that we want to fill that time in our day with the idea of working on that activity. Saying I'll spend an hour on my essay could either mean I write something moving, or that I write ten words while sporadically checking Facebook. There's no standard of quality to achieve here.

On the other hand, something different happens when I say I'm trying to write 2500 words a day, or one chapter a day, or ten pages a day. Or when I decide to go for a four mile run. Or when I decide I'm simply not getting up until I finish the introduction to this godforsaken essay. When we make goals tangible—and not simply based on whether we show up or not—we're making ourselves do something real. We're not just filling dead air.

But it's still not so easy. Because if sitting in my chair for an hour ripping hangnails isn't useful, neither is writing 2500 useless words on my story. Sure, it feels like I'm accomplishing something, but all I'm accomplishing is much more time necessary for editing once I want to create something that people will actually want to read. So in this way, setting tangible "progress" goals is no better than aiming for "time" goals. But these are the two major ways to track movement through our lives: so is there no useful, motivating way to set goals?

I think the answer is sort of circular, because I think it still comes back to time. I've found that there's a huge difference connotation-wise between the following perspectives:

"I am going to write (run, work on my startup, suffer) for three hours per day, every day, so I will finish my book (reach my running goal, start my business, finish my essay) as soon as possible. This way I will have reached my goal as efficiently as possible, so I can move on to the next one."


"I am going to write for three hours per day focusing on the quality of what I produce, not the speed at which I produce. The goal is not to finish as soon as possible, but to finish with a 'perfect' (or as close as reasonably possible without wasting time) product as soon as possible."


The first belief, which most of us have, focuses on speed instead of results. This may seem beneficial in the short-term, but when you realize you've spent two months writing a bad novel, or two months training for a race and making little to no progress on your PR, or a year planning a business that simply isn't feasible, it'll feel even worse to realize you've simply wasted your time.

By focusing on time as the enabler of quality, and not of results, we not only feel more motivated—because we aren't rushing toward a goal, but instead pursuing perfection and mastery in what we do—but end up with a product worthy of our effort.