Reaching Superficial Milestones

I want to run 2000km in 2016 and after a 3-week break due to illness, I'm behind schedule.<...>

So it's going to be tough to reach that milestone. That said, I'm not even sure why 2000km is even that important. Is it more important than 1900km? Or 1850km?

In thinking through this, I realised that I'm not always super-clear with myself about why I sometimes set specific goals.

I can remember feeling so much stress, anxiety and impatience before Conversio initially reached $1m ARR, then $100k MRR and again $125k MRR. The truth was that reaching those exact milestones brought a lot of relief and pride, but didn't materially change anything. Nothing changes when MRR increases from $99k to $100k, yet $100k MRR is a goal and milestone that every new SaaS founder fanatically aspires to reach. I certainly did.

It just now feels like these goals and milestones are a little superficial and generic. It's like they're the status quo and I'm pursuing them blindly. Or the numbers should look better when rounded to the nearest hundred. I don't know.

What I do know is that it's probably a much better exercise when I can think through these goals in a different way. Where reaching a goal or milestone should be about what happens after that: what opportunities can I pursue when I get to that goal or what decisions would I make then that I can't make now?

Cover artwork by Francis Taylor. Intro & outro music is "Warm Sunny Day" by sunchannelmusic.