How to reach goals without trying - and why projects are magic bullets for your career

Milestones are important but real progress takes place in building projects that can level up your skills and supercharge your career.

While it’s necessary to set milestones, it’s good to remember that goals are metrics. Goals are merely a gauge of progress, not where progress actually takes place. 

A goal should resemble a destination you could reach if you were more experienced, smarter, and better at a specific skill. Framed in this way, you can ensure that hitting a goal and personal growth are synonymous.

The most sustainable approach to setting goals without letting them overwhelm you is giving yourself projects that, just by working on them, mean you’ll automatically reach checkpoints. 

Your curiosity will tell you what’s next

It’s easy to say you want to start a project. It’s harder to figure out what that looks like. 

For me, I started this blog in 2018 because I knew I wanted to be a better writer, and I knew that because there was nothing else I’d rather do than spend my days writing. I was curious as to how to get there.

While I didn’t know what being a “better” writer actually meant at the time, I did recognize that progress could only happen if I had something to chip away at over time. 

If you’re unsure what project to build, consult your own curiosity to find out what direction to take. 

• What does your sense of wonder pull you toward?

• What would you love to do everyday, regardless if someone paid you for it?

And, if you can, find out how to marry your curiosity with your career path.

• What specific skills do you need to be an expert at to make progress at your job?

• What skills do the people further along in their careers have that you want to work on?

The simplest way to check off milestones

Projects offer you the opportunity to dissect what it takes to achieve a goal, and they allow you to focus on the present. 

A looming deadline or goal can spark procrastination and anxiety, but a project forces you to build something in the here and now. Massive progress can ensue when you prioritize the moment immediately before you.

Think of a blog, YouTube channel, podcast, photo or art portfolio on Instagram, or something else.

With consistent effort on something, you will accelerate toward a goal automatically. The process of creation, failure, learning, and the synthesis of skills all put you in a growth mindset. 

What’s more, your awareness of “what it takes” climbs dramatically as your project improves.

It’s worth noting, too, that whatever project you pick, it must slightly exceed your current skill level. A 2019 study found that optimal progress happens when you’re failing about 15% of the time.

That happens when something isn’t too easy, but you’re still notching enough victories to maintain confidence and build understanding. 

If a task is too easy it becomes mundane, and your motivation can wane. And if it’s too hard, that can kill your confidence. 

Incorporating just enough difficulty to spark those regular small failures is how you know there’s growth, and that your skills are improving. The challenge is the fun part. 

All the while, you inch closer to goals, and can often surpass them without realizing it. 

Determine what you want to learn about, what direction you wish to grow in, and let that guide your action, momentum, and passion. 

Set your priorities and let them evolve

The point of projects isn’t to put so much on your plate so that you’re stretched thin. Your first goal in starting a blog shouldn’t be to get a huge audience or make it pretty, but to produce quality writing that improves over time.

Eventually, once you solidify that main skill, you can begin to turn to the other aspects of running a website. 

If you don’t specify your priorities, you won’t know what to focus on.

A key lesson in building something on your own is that it can teach you what tasks can move the needle. You learn what is worth the most amount of energy and time, and what you can forget about. 

When I first started this website, it looked like trash. It was hard to navigate. Complicated menus hid all the articles. 

Only months later, I began making tiny tweaks to the site, adding and subtracting widgets and changing colors. The current desktop homepage didn’t look like this until 2021. 

The whole time, however, my writing improved. The more I wrote the more I learned, and it took me less and less time to write articles. 

After a couple years, with my skill as a writer more cemented, I had the bandwidth to turn my focus to design, photography, and blog marketing. 

My project became more cohesive and well-rounded as a result of prioritizing my writing, and I was able to pick up a slew of other skills along the way. 

But only by working on it did I find out the best ways to spend my time. Priorities evolve as you grow and get better, and as your project develops. 

A career magic-bullet

The magic of a project is that it’s something you do on your own, without a boss or a manager, but it has the chance to skyrocket your career and check off goals like nothing else you could do in the office. 

A project gives you the opportunity to tell future employers, “Look what I already did on my own,” rather than trying to convince them of your potential. 

If you stick with it long enough, you’ll have a body of work to show others and leverage in job negotiations. 

Or, eventually, a project may be your ticket out of the traditional nine-to-five lifestyle. 

The best way to let your goals achieve themselves is to build something you are motivated to work on.