Everyone who does a job that they love is overpaid. It is the garbage collectors, sewer cleaners, and other unpleasant jobs that are underpaid.

If teachers don’t love teaching and feel they don’t get enough money to make it worthwhile, they should definitely leave teaching.

Why do you “value” work by what someone pays for it?

So I’m nearly done eliminating that clutter and ready for a new, more pleasurable goal. This post gives me a number of ways to think about that goal. Thanks.

Basically, I think you are swinging from one extreme to another, here. The one goal that is working well isn’t process oriented. Don’t try to fix the one thing that isn’t broken.

I take two things away from the success of your reading goal.

The first is that it is concrete and measurable. You can look at your book list and see every thing that is checked off; each book read is a real, tangible achievement. Notice how that’s different from saying, “I read for an hour, today.” You can’t check any title off your list, or point to a book on your shelf and recognize it as a friend. It doesn’t put you any closer to your target of 100 books.

The second thing is that your goal is incremental in nature. Its a goal made up of discrete, attainable steps. Each book is a milestone along your path to the goal.

That’s different from a process because the process lacks any flexibility to it. If your goal is “go to the gym every other day” what happens if you miss a day? Has the whole endeavor failed? or succeeded less well? A process goal also robs you of any motive to excel. Just showing up is enough to meet your goal, no need to push yourself.

I think your repertoire goal is less satisfying to you because it isn’t as incremental as 100 books. Each piece is a really big goal, without any reinforcing milestones along the way. You might divide your pieces up into smaller sections. Scheherazade is in four movements, of course, but Clocks is also in four sections as well. You should use whatever method is necessary to break your big, monolithic goals into something more incremental.

At the end of the year, you will be able to play your chosen pieces. No amount of technical proficiency will give you the same level of satisfaction and motivation to continue playing.

I have read a large number of new books last year and now I am taking a break and reading some old favorites, like Dragonsong.

Goals are good but you should have an eject button. If a goal isn’t working out, it is okay to give up.

And #1 Dave – I read at least several books a week without speed reading training. Whenever I have any down time at all, my default response is to grab a book (soon, my Kindle!). Not tweeting or IM-ing or calling someone on the cell. And in the evenings I read at least an hour daily, if not more.

The only one where you DIDN’T say ‘do x, y times a week for z length of time’ was the reading goal – the only one that’s on track.

Also, as Interested Reader said, in your original posting on this, you had practice time built in – it just wasn’t enough.

The real meat of this is about how it’s important in goals to review them periodically, check your progress and determine if you need to change your process in order to attain the goal in the end.

I can’t directly link but it was on Dec 27 posted between resolution 2 and 3.

Also in your original resolutions for piano and exerices you were going to devote 1 hour a day to each. Maybe you over reached and needed to scale down.

Or that reading that be done pretty much anywhere or at any time, while exercises and piano playing have more specific requirements (i.e. I can imagine you reading if you were wide awake at 3 am, but probably not taking a walk outside in the dark, or playing the piano and waking everyone else up).

I think you might be looking into this one too much.

A young pup keeps chasing his tail around. An older dog comes up to him and says, “Why are you chasing your tail?”

The pup replies, “Because I’ve heard that there is happiness in my tail.” The older dog responds, “Wh y don’t you just go about your business and happiness will follow you throughout the day.”