As I grow older I start to think a little bit differently. Many years ago I said something like this on this forum "my goal is to work like a dog in the first half of my life in order to live like a king in the latter half". Now ... I kinda struggle to quantify both phrase of that statement. The first decade and a half I was at the US I definitely felt I worked like a dog, I don't think I have been working like a dog in the last few years. But I also have trouble imagining what living like a king look like, because my standard for luxury is kinda low I think.
In the last couple years I started questioning the idea behind "having a goal" at all. A student with a goal of "just passing the class" may not put in a lot of effort and achieve a result lower than he should get. A student with a goal of "passing the class with an A" may create unnecessary pressure on himself, which in turn may compromise the result. I have been thinking ... maybe just focus on the short term afford and ... take whatever result that lead you to? So in this example, the student's only goal would be "I gonna do my best everyday". If your best is enough to get an A, great! If you best is only enough for you to pass, be content with that too. At the end the question isn't about "did you get an A" or "did you pass", but "have you done your best". In my experience, usually when I end up at a result I don't want, 9/10 times upon reflection it's really about me not doing my best.
I have tried to apply this line of thinking into a few things I do lately, and so far, I like it. I had tried to study Japanese a few times, each time with a goal I set to myself, and each time I faltered. This time, I decided not to set any goal at all. Things like "go through this volume in 3 months, knowing this many vocabulary, able to read this many kanji ...etc..." had all ended up overwhelmed and discouraged me in the past. Now, my only focus is the day to day discipline: 1.5h - > 2h a day, everyday. Where will that amount of afford take me ... will it be a success or failure, no clue because I'm not even bothering about defining such a thing this time. But what I can tell is I'm more happy about the progress I'm making now comparing to the time where I actually tried to work toward a specific milestone.