“Look who thinks he’s nothing”—funny. :) Perhaps more general version of your point is beware of taking pride in subgoal measures of accomplishment, if subgoals without the goal are worth little.
Actually I think I tend to do the opposite. I undervalue subgoals and then become unmotivated when I can’t reach the ultimate goal directly.
E.g. I’m trying to get published. Book written, check. Query letters written, check. Queries sent to agents, check. All these are valuable subgoals. But they don’t feel like progress, because I can’t check off the book that says “book published”.
I hope that you are not still struggling with this, but for anyone else in this situation: I would think that you need to change the way you set your goals. There is loads of advice out there on this topic, but there’s a few rules I can recall off the top of my head:
“If you formulate a goal, make it concrete, achievable, and make the path clear and if possible decrease the steps required.” In your case, every one of the subgoals already had a lot of required actions, so the overarching goal of “publish a book” might be too broadly formulated.
“If at all possible don’t use external markers for your goals.” What apparently usually happens is that either you drop all your good behaviour once you cross the finish line, or your goal becomes/reveals itself to be unreachable and you feel like you can do nothing right (seriously, the extend to which this happens… incredible.), etc.
“Focus more on the trajectory than on the goal itself.” Once you get there, you will want different things and what you have learned and acquired will just be normal. There is no permanent state of “achieving the goal”, there is the path there, and then the path past it.
“Look who thinks he’s nothing”—funny. :) Perhaps more general version of your point is beware of taking pride in subgoal measures of accomplishment, if subgoals without the goal are worth little.
Actually I think I tend to do the opposite. I undervalue subgoals and then become unmotivated when I can’t reach the ultimate goal directly.
E.g. I’m trying to get published. Book written, check. Query letters written, check. Queries sent to agents, check. All these are valuable subgoals. But they don’t feel like progress, because I can’t check off the book that says “book published”.
I hope that you are not still struggling with this, but for anyone else in this situation: I would think that you need to change the way you set your goals. There is loads of advice out there on this topic, but there’s a few rules I can recall off the top of my head:
“If you formulate a goal, make it concrete, achievable, and make the path clear and if possible decrease the steps required.” In your case, every one of the subgoals already had a lot of required actions, so the overarching goal of “publish a book” might be too broadly formulated.
“If at all possible don’t use external markers for your goals.” What apparently usually happens is that either you drop all your good behaviour once you cross the finish line, or your goal becomes/reveals itself to be unreachable and you feel like you can do nothing right (seriously, the extend to which this happens… incredible.), etc.
“Focus more on the trajectory than on the goal itself.” Once you get there, you will want different things and what you have learned and acquired will just be normal. There is no permanent state of “achieving the goal”, there is the path there, and then the path past it.
Very roughly speaking.
All the best.