Goals are very different yet similar to a to-do list.

Typically, you’d just add stuff to a to-do list or maybe a calendar. But I found a problem with these: they’re too short term. For the short term, you want to usually follow the SMART framework where you are very descriptive. You want your short-term goals to be quantitative, have clear timelines, follow a rigid structure.

But this doesn’t work for a long-term goal because you usually lack information at the start and there are simply too many variables to account for.

Take Jadebook for example. I initially though building Jadebook was gonna be so easy. I’ll build the whole thing in 2 months and it’ll be great. It took 6 months to get to a point where I’d actually publish it. I simply lacked information at the start. I didn’t know that I’d have to learn so much about encryption, or set up rate-limiting, have so many features or have it performant and scalable.

How goals work

Goals are more akin to a scientific discovery journal. So, you might have a unquantifiable goal like: “Make more money”. You can’t really quantify it. You can’t really structure it either because don’t know what works and what doesn’t.

So, you create little entries instead, like:

Today, I tried selling lemons outside my house. I thought it was a great idea until 5 hours in, I realised that I live on a no-through road and the house on the street is mine so the number customers are basically 0. Luckily my mum saw this and pretended to buy my lemonade for 5 dollars. I was happy until she asked for the 5 dollars back :(

Now, you tried something. Tomorrow, you might try something else. You’re essentially going in a direction, you don’t know what lies on the path but you’re making progress.