The achievable goal
Over one winter break during my Fulbright years, I wrote my first and (to date) only knitting pattern—though “pattern” is a pretty generous word for what I’m about to describe. I used enormously fat needles and three strands of yarn held together, cast on somewhere around 20 stitches, and then knit until it was long enough to somewhat snuggly encircle a neck (about 12 inches, as I recall). Then I sewed the ends together, and done. A neck warmer. I made a bunch of them to give as gifts, and each one took about an hour from start to finish. I called the pattern “the achievable goal.”
I apply this philosophy to all sorts of things now. The achievable goal is about setting yourself up for success by aiming for the bare minimum. Do you have a 3,000-word piece to write? Write 100 of them. Are you worried about finding sources to interview for a story? Do some research and make a list of possibilities; you can actually email them tomorrow. Do you have an ever growing list of errands you never seem to get to? Do a single one, and then go home and take a nap.
You are probably recoiling in horror right now. The achievable goal goes against everything the twin cults of ambition and productivity stand for. Write for eight hours straight! Cook a full meal from scratch every day! Turn all your hobbies into side hustles! Don’t you know that if you just work hard enough you can have it all!!!!
That way lies failure, my friends. We all know that, and yet we give in to those siren songs anyway. The achievable goal, on the other hand, helps you loosen the death grip you have on your dreams. It lowers the stakes so dramatically that you barely notice them at all. It repositions your expectations for yourself firmly within reach. And suddenly, you’re done. In the spirit of my pattern-that-was-barely-a-pattern, here are the steps.
1. The achievable goal must be less than you think you can realistically do in a day. Not a little less. A lot less. So much less it makes you laugh at how easy it will be. So much less that when you finish it, you want to do a little more.
2. Do not do any more. You want to protect that sense of ease, because that’s what will give you momentum.
3. Only one achievable goal should be attempted per day. You heard me. ONE PER DAY. If deadlines mean you absolutely must set two, they should be for different projects and there should be an ample chunk of off-time between them.
If you’re working to a deadline, this method obviously takes some planning ahead to make sure you finish on time. (Make the planning one day’s achievable goal!) But I like this strategy best for projects where no one is looking over your shoulder or waiting for the end result, or where the deadline is so far off it feels that way. Over the past month I’d tied myself in knots over various projects and rendered myself incapable of moving forward on any of them. Returning to the achievable goal is helping me untwist.
Recommendations
Olga Tokarczuk. Amazingly, I had actually read the work of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature winner before she won! Her fragmentary novel House of Day, House of Night was assigned in a class about contemporary European literature I took in college. That class had the best reading list of my entire academic career, and Tokarczuk’s book was my favorite of all of them. But her work was basically impossible to find in the U.S., and I never heard anyone talk about it again. It began to feel like I had dreamed it up. So you can imagine my delight when I opened a recent issue of The New Yorker to find a huge profile of Tokarczuk, the first evidence I’d had in over a decade that she actually exists. And then she won the Nobel Prize! I can buy so many of her books now! Everyone will want to talk about her! I just couldn’t be happier about how she and her work has reappeared in my life. (No comment on the 2019 prize.)
“Forged by Volcanoes, Kamchatka Offers Majestic, Magnetic Wilds.” This piece should come with a Surgeon General’s warning about putting you in immediate danger of dropping everything and getting on a(n extremely expensive) plane to the Russian Far East.
And in honor of Succession’s season finale tonight, I present you with this incredible work of art.