Now I just want to explore. That may mean blog posts, research papers, new investing strategies, letters, podcasts, long periods of nothing, or maybe another book. Who knows? Exploration is continuous, there is no end point. Focusing on exploration is very rewarding all the time. It may produce things that look like end points, like achievements, but those things are just byproducts.

The difference from goals is that we're not so much setting an arbitrary target (X dollars, Y hours, Z readers, etc.) but simply looking at what we're already doing—the flow of the river—and asking, "What's a small adjustment I can make to improve this?"

I like this because it lets you respond more fluidly to the challenges and opportunities that arise in life. Goals don't let you adjust and re-orient with new information and new opportunities. Plus, they keep you looking at the future instead of at the present.

Instead of 'forcing' the water to reach some destination (a goal), we simply make small adjustments to the flow or contours of the stream as problems (inevitably) arise.

One benefit of doing things this way is that the focus is to integrate changes into your life instead of trying to reach a goal.

A raging waterfall crashed down on my mind, but the water was comprised of fingers, a hundred fingers, probing and pressing down into the skin of my neck, and then punching up through the bone of the back of my skull and into my brain...I smelled a burning inside my own head and there came a moment when I screamed, my skull crushed to dust and reassembled, mote by mote.