Love the Process or Chase the Goal

Should you love the day-to-day, or should you purely chase the end result, regardless of whether you like the day-to-day work or not?

Different people have different philosophies on this, and I don’t see a clear connection between either choice and ending up with a good, fulfilling life. We don’t know whether loving the work is what gets you to your goals, or whether aiming straight at the goal and doing whatever work it takes is what gets you there.

I believe you need to try both for yourself to see.

The gym

I look at this the same way I look at going to the gym.

I started when I was about 18, with some friends from high school who I ended up living with in college. We worked out at the Cook/Douglass gym at Rutgers, in New Jersey.

I was about 170 pounds with no muscle, kind of skinny-fat. It was all about the end goal. I had a vision for my body, and I got it from guys I’d watch online. Arnold Schwarzenegger, C.T. Fletcher on YouTube, Ronnie Coleman, even someone like Stallone. Different guys in phenomenal shape who I looked up to and wanted to look like. I’m around six feet tall, so I figured if I could get to 180 or 190 pounds I’d look great.

I didn’t enjoy training. It took a lot of effort to get myself to go. The workouts were hard, my body hurt, and it was uncomfortable. I wasn’t hooked on the process. I just really wanted the goal I had set for myself.

But as I did it more and started to see improvements, I began to fall in love with the process. That made reaching the goal easier, and I developed a love for something I didn’t have before.

Setting a goal can work the same way. If you’re committed to the goal and committed to the actions it takes to get there, you may find over time that you start to love the process. Which means you don’t necessarily need to love it at first.

Where I quit

But it doesn’t always arrive. I’ve been stuck at this crossroads myself, where I start toward a goal, reach a part of it that I hate, and quit.

I have a goal to be financially free and wealthy. I’ve tried taking software ideas, building them, and moving toward a business. But I hate customer acquisition, sales, and marketing. What I’m good at as an engineer is building.

One of those ideas was ChatTitleAI, a tool that writes YouTube titles that get more views. It worked. I used it on my own watch channel and it grew my videos. Then I got to the part where I needed customers, and I started emailing YouTubers of all sizes offering a free trial. I sent hundreds of them. I got some yeses and a lot of rejections, which is what you’d expect from any marketing campaign.

And then I quit, the same way I always had. Not because the thing didn’t work, but because of how much I hated marketing it and trying to find customers for it.

So I sabotaged myself out of reaching that goal, because I was looking to love the process. And in that case, I can’t love the process and get to the goal. I have to choose one or the other.

What I realized is that doing business that way is not for me. I’ve had more success building a YouTube channel, creating things and building an audience, which I’ve done semi-successfully so far, a few thousand subscribers on a channel about watches.

If I go the business route later, I can start it on the foundation of that audience and have something to tap into right away. The marketing gets easier, and I can focus on the part I’m actually good at, which is building.

You can’t fully commit to both

Not loving a process can be informative. But you still have to decide which matters more, committing to the goal or committing to loving the process, because you can’t really commit to both at once.

If you’re aiming to love the process from the beginning, there’s only a certain subset of things you would choose to do, and those things might not lead to the goal you actually want. On the other hand, you’d have a good life doing things you enjoy every day.

I can’t say one is wrong and one is right. And maybe in different parts of your life you choose differently. Sometimes you choose the process, sometimes you choose the goal.

Your personality plays into it

Some people have a higher capacity for finding joy in something. They truly find joy in the things they do. Other people find that joy less often, so they may need to force themselves a little more to act.

I’m in that second group. I need to force myself a little more into something to really see whether I enjoy it. What I’ve found is that I really enjoy progression, and that the right kind of hard work brings me great joy afterward. My love of exercise is the best example. And that has been the case with writing these posts as well.

That’s the problem with simply following somebody else’s advice. People are so different, and advice is often tailored to who you are. Some of it will work for you and some won’t apply at all. So you have to pick and choose.

Make the choice on purpose

I’m presenting the options so that you know they’re there. You’re making a choice between two directions, optimizing for loving the process or optimizing for reaching the goal.

Once you can see the choice, you can make it for yourself.