Usually, I never set goals for myself. I rather just try to work on things consistently and then it leads somewhere. Goals are often really artificial and in the end, they don’t matter - the only thing that matters is the process to get to towards that goal and how much time/effort you spend on that process. If you just do everything that needs to be done all the time, the concrete goal “winning condition” doesn’t matter anyway.

It’s the goals vs systems approach.

If you’re a writer, your goal is to write a book. Your system is the writing schedule that you follow each week.
If you’re a runner, your goal is to run a marathon. Your system is your training schedule for the month.
If you’re an entrepreneur, your goal is to build a million dollar business. Your system is your sales and marketing process.
If you completely ignored your goals and focused only on your system, would you still get results?
— James Clear

The only drawback is that it’s easy to slack off and not give it your all. You convince yourself that you’re already doing as much as possible when in reality you’re not. In contrast, when working towards a concrete goal, number, or deadline, right in front of you, you could probably work even more. So, it’s a matter of discipline and short-term goals.

However, it can be quite fun and insightful to reflect on long-term goals. I’ll come back to this post in a year and see what I really achieved in the end. So, here are my goals for 2018, in no particular order:

• Write a book / interactive course / video course, and sell it
• Read a book each month
• Write a smart contract (d)app that earns money on some blockchain
• Code a side project in a functional programming language. I always liked functional programming in university and it’s been a while since I used one. Maybe ReasonML & React for frontend? Elixir for backend? Haskell for smart contracts (Cardano)?
• Learn a new framework doing a side project. Probably Apollo & GraphQL? Vue.js?
• Finally start live-coding on twitch. Been procrastinating on this for too long
• Less sports. I’m going to the gym 4x a week now, but my priorities changed and I want to go down to 3 times or do a shorter routine
• Write blog posts more often. Bi-weekly schedule?
• Earn 1000 EUR / month by end of the year through my side-projects.