Goals, Progress, and Process

A Goal sets the target. If we are a ship on the open sea, a Goal is our direction. It gives us our bearing, it is the star which sets our compasses due north.

Progress measures how far we have come and how far we still have to go. Progress represents a series of markers or mini-goals on the way to the ultimate Goal. They tell us if our processes are bringing us to our Goal. These islands in the sea which we have anticipated to sail past, if on our way north, we indeed sail past them, we know we are headed in the right direction. But if we only see these islands far away on the horizon, we know we are off course.

Process is the means by which we make progress and proceed towards our Goal. In the analogy, process is how we sail. It is the trimming of sails, the reading of winds, and the steering of the rudder, ensuring our ship glides forward steadily. It is this actual day-by-day, minute-by-minute work which carries us forward towards our series of progress markers and our ultimate Goal. Proper process leads to Progress; a cumulation of Progress leads to our Goal.

This all entails one simple thing: having identified our Goal and a series of Progress markers to keep us on track, we must focus on Process. The Process is what matters. It is the work we do; that which propels our Progress towards our Goal. It is err to spend too much time obsessing over our Progress or the Goal itself.

Identifying the Goal.

Explicitly naming or identifying the Goal is the first essential step. It gives the ship a bearing, a direction to head. My Goal is the 2025 Nice Ironman, and within this overarching goal, I have three specific nested goals. My personal bronze, silver, and gold.

Bronze. Simply start the race. That is it. While this seems quite doable, it implies something about my next months of my training: that I do not get injured, either acutely or from overuse, during the course of my training which would prevent me from starting. It also means that I do not burnout, essentially, a system-wide overuse injury. 

Silver. Finish the race. This is obviously harder than just starting the race, and it suggests an additional thing about my training: that it prepares me to go continuously for a very long time and at least faster than the cutoff times.¹ 

Gold. Finish in under 12 hours. This will require me to not only be able to go for long distances, but to do so with a relative degree of speed. To break my goal into chunks, this gives me 1 hour 30 minutes for the swim, a generous 10 minutes for T1, 6 hours 10 minutes for the bike, another generous 10 minutes for T2, and a final 4 hours for the marathon, all for a cumulative 12 hours. 

Each goal implies something about my Process and the Progress that must occur. I need to not get injured. I must train and complete for very long distances, and do so at speed.  By identifying the goal, I identify things that will need to happen along the way.

Measuring Progress.

Markers measure our Progress towards our Goal.

I have a series of running races between now and the Ironman. The Paris marathon in April 2025, the Paris half marathon in March, and the Hoka 10k Paris Centre just two days ago on November 17, 2024. 

The 10k went very well. I ran a 41:07 which is over 4 minutes faster than my previous PR from six months ago in May 2024 when I ran a 45:24. That is around a 10% improvement in 6 months, and considering that I have only been working with my new coach for the last five weeks, I am very encouraged. But there is still much progress to be made between now and running a sub 4 hour marathon after a 2.4 mile swim and 112 mile bike ride.

So far, my Progress markers only include running events. I will need to identify Progress markers for the swim and the bike too, and ideally, for all three.

Here is the rub of Progress. Either we are achieving Progress, and it can give us encouragement and affirmation that our Process is working and that we should keep doing what we are doing–that the ship’s heading is correct. Alternatively or we are making minimal to no Progress, or even going in the wrong direction, and this gives us information that we need to look at our Process and see where it is going wrong.

Creating and Repeating Process.

Process is the really important part: it is where the rubber meets the road and Progress towards the Goal is made. It is in a consistent Process we move forward. What do these processes entail?

Obviously, training my run, bike, and swim, and to do so for long distances, and to do these distances at speed. This means I need long workouts, but I also need workouts for sustained speed in each discipline. And given that it is a triathlon, where I have to do the events consecutively, I need to train to do them one after another. This means I need to do brick workouts; a swim then a bike, or a bike then a run.

But the Goal and achieving my desired Progress entails Process beyond workouts. Getting to the starting line without injury implies that I recover well– this suggests I need to be warming up and cooling down from workouts, and incorporating stretching, yoga, and bodywork (foam roll, massage, etc.) to help prevent injury. Preventing burnout also implies that I am recovering between workouts so that fatigue does not accumulate to the point where it kills my motivation. This means I need to get enough sleep, and not put the foot on the recovery-brake through unhealthy lifestyle choices like too much alcohol. All this training is obviously very energy intensive, and suggests I need a process of healthy nutrition too. Thus, the Process has lots of subparts: workouts, recovery, nutrition, rest.

The necessary Process is defined by the Goal. The Process implemented leads to Progress.

The Important Bit: Focusing on Process.

Everything I have written so far is rather obvious, but here is the key: Now that the Goal is defined, I should not think about it too much. If I think about the Goal, and how much Progress I need to make, I am daunted, afraid, discouraged, and tempted to give up on the attempt.

Let me illustrate this point with an example. 

The other day, I was out on a bike ride by myself. I had under-fueled and was getting hungry, and then around mile 50, my headphones ran out of battery. Without the distraction of music, my mind began wandering to my Goal:

“Do an Ironman? A 2.4 mile swim, then a 112 mile bike ride, then a 26 mile run? I am exhausted after a 50 mile ride. How will I ever do a marathon after over double this on the bike? And the swim! This is impossible. What a stupid goal, why am I even doing this?”

And thus the fear and doubt creep in.

Considering the Goal put me into a state of fear and worry. It made me feel defeated, and that feeling of defeat could lead to buying into those negative thoughts and giving up on the Goal.

This is why we must learn to focus on Process. It grounds us in the daily routine, the actionable everyday which culminates to Progress and the Goal. 

Focusing on the Goal is like staring at the North Star while piloting the ship, or continually looking for the Islands out to sea and noticing how far away they seem, but neglecting to actually do all the activities which pilot the ship. And these, the everyday, mundane activities, are the important ones, because they are the only ones that actually exist.

I am learning to focus on Process. I learn to block out the negative thoughts out which say the Goal is unreachable or impossible. I focus on Process instead–the here and now, instead.

When I consider the Goal, I am daunted. But when I live in the here and now, in the mundane everyday and focus on the actionable moment to create my daily Process, I make Progress. Bit by bit, day by day.

Written by Ian Good. November 19, 2024. Paris, France.

1.  Cutoff times for Nice: the swim must be completed in 2 hours 15 minutes after starting, the bike within 10 hours and 45 minutes, and the run within 16 hours. Put another way, if the race starts at 8:00 a.m., I have to be out of T1 by 10:15 a.m., then I have to be out of T2 by 6:15 p.m., and finally, I have to across the finish line by midnight. These cutoff times exist for a reason; if I am not going to beat them, I am likely not going to finish the whole race. ↩︎