For three years I kept a spreadsheet. Revenue targets, reading goals, gym streaks, a tab for the year, a tab for the quarter, conditional formatting that turned a cell green when I hit a number.
It worked, in the sense that the numbers went up. Revenue climbed. I read more books than the year before. I could open that file and see, in a glance, that I was winning.
The question it never asked
The spreadsheet had no column for whether any of it felt like mine. It could not tell me if a Tuesday had been good. It only asked whether I had moved a number.
A goal you never examine will happily replace the life it was supposed to serve.
I deleted it on a Sunday, not dramatically, just closed the tab and did not reopen it. The numbers did not stop existing. I just stopped organizing my week around making them go up.
What replaced it is less impressive and more honest: a short list of what mattered that week, written by hand, with room for “nothing, and that was fine.”
