Do You Set Personal Goals, or Only Finish Lines?

Do you set personal goals for yourself?

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Today’s WordPress prompt asked a simple question: do you set personal goals for yourself? I said yes, but not the kind the planners recommend. When my working years ended, the deadlines and milestones stopped arriving almost overnight. What remained were goals with no finish line at all: to keep learning, to be more patient, to grow in faith, to write something each day that might give someone a reason to hope. I have come to think those were the ones holding everything up. I would love to hear from you: which of your goals do you hope you never finish?

Do you set personal goals for yourself?

Yes, I do. But not quite the kind the productivity books recommend.

The standard advice says a good goal must be specific, measurable, achievable and time-bound. Lose five kilograms by March. Read twenty books this year. Finish the manuscript by December. That advice works well for tasks. For a life, I have come to believe it is the wrong advice. The goals that have mattered most to me are the ones I will never be able to tick off.

I. A finished goal leaves an empty room

Every goal with a finish line carries a hidden cost: the morning after you reach it. Athletes speak of the flatness that follows the medal. Students know the strange emptiness of the day after the final examination. For most of my working years, my goals were of this kind: the next responsibility, the next deadline, the next milestone. Retirement removed them almost at a stroke. What remained were the goals that never had a finish line, and I found they had been holding up the house all along.

II. The goals that matter are verbs, not nouns

A goal that can be completed is a noun: a degree, a promotion, a target. A goal that cannot be completed is a verb: to learn, to understand, to be patient, to grow in faith. At this stage of life I am trying to understand how artificial intelligence works and what it may mean for the world ahead. I will never finish that, because the subject moves faster than I do. That is exactly what keeps it alive for me. Patience is the same. I have never once been able to declare it achieved; every difficult conversation reopens the file.

III. Three traditions, one discovery

In the Metaphysics, Aristotle draws a distinction I find more useful than any planner. Some activities are incomplete until they end: no one can be building a house and have built it at the same moment. Others are complete at every moment: one can be living well and have lived well at the same time. The first kind satisfies only at the finish. The second satisfies all the way through.

The Tamil poet Subramania Bharati [1] wrote a short prayer-poem that is, in effect, a list of personal goals. It opens: “Manathil urudhi vendum, vakkinile inimai vendum.” It means: I want firmness in my mind, sweetness in my speech. He also asks for good thoughts, and for his dreams to come true, which is a goal that can be reached. Yet the requests he places first cannot be achieved once and filed away. A steady mind and a gentle tongue must be asked for again tomorrow.

And Paul, writing to the Philippians, admits openly that he has not reached his goal and is not yet complete. He forgets what lies behind and presses on (Philippians 3:12–14). By then he had founded churches across much of the Mediterranean world, and he still counted himself unfinished. I find that consoling.

IV. The fair objection

There is a real danger in what I am arguing. “Becoming more patient” can be a comfortable way of never being tested. “Learning” can quietly turn into browsing. A goal without a finish line can drift into a goal without effort. On this point the productivity books are right: little gets done without something that can be measured.

My answer is to pair the two. The large goal has no finish line; the small goal has a finish line every evening. For more than three years, Rise&Inspire has asked me for one piece of writing each day. Each day’s post is finished, measurable, and done. The goal it serves, that someone somewhere finds a reason to hope, will never be finished, and I would not want it to be.

V. Why this matters at every age

The young are told to set goals so that they will arrive somewhere. The old are quietly told that they have arrived  may now stop. Both messages rest on the same mistake: that goals are about arrival. The goals that matter most were never about arriving. They are about who we become while we walk. As long as a person holds one goal that cannot be finished, that person has a reason to look forward to tomorrow.

What about you? Which of your goals can be finished, and which one do you hope you never finish?

Note for readers

[1] Subramania Bharati (1882-1921), honoured as Mahakavi (“great poet”) Bharathiyar, was a Tamil poet, journalist and freedom fighter whose verse helped shape modern Tamil literature. The poem is widely known by its opening words, “Manathil Urudhi Vendum” (roughly, “Firmness of Mind Is What I Need”). The translations here are my own.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire  riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 25 October 2026: Do you set personal goals for yourself?

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