I don’t have goals.

I know that might seem a little crazy, but it’s true. I don’t.

There’s not a certain amount of books I’m trying to write. There’s not a certain amount of books I’m trying to sell. I don’t have a “number” that I’m trying to hit financially. There’s not a certain number of downloads I’m trying to get ​my podcast​ to or followers I want to reach.

I run every day, but I’m not training to run a marathon. I swim a lot (​as we talked about recently​) and bike, too, but it’s not because I want to do an Iron Man.

That’s sort of the point. What I want to do is run and swim, what I want to do is write—to me that is the win.

I don’t fault other people for having goals—if that’s what motivates you, enjoy. And obviously, companies and coaches need to set goals for their staff and for their team—this is how they evaluate and compare performance. A public company has to have revenue targets because investors demand them.

They’re just not for me.

I’m much more focused on process.

That is to say, I focus on doing the thing as opposed to achieving some particular thing.

Why?

It mostly has to do with control, that central issue for the Stoics.

Most goals are rooted in an external result that’s not in your control. Writing a book is not the goal most people have. No, their goal is hitting a bestseller list. Only you determine whether you write a book or not, but the bestseller list? That’s up to the New York Times. Winning a Grammy? That’s up for the Recording Academy. A Nobel Prize? That’s up to the folks in Stockholm. Even competitive goals like being the fastest person in a race or the richest person in the world—these depend on what your competitors do.

The fixation on external results that are not in your control carries a hidden cost. It consumes a significant amount of time and energy that would be better spent doing things that actually generate those results. A musician chasing a spot on the charts churns out derivative work, never finding their unique sound. A speaker fixated on the audience’s reaction loses their train of thought. A swimmer who glances over at the competition or up at the finish creates drag and slows down.

Over the years, I’ve worked on lots of book and product launches for people. One thing I like to find out right away is what ‘success’ might look like to them. When a person starts to talk about very specific numbers like “Success is hitting #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List” or “Success is making [$$$,$$$$$,$$$$]” or “Success is selling one million copies,” I get a little pit in my stomach for them. First, because of how random these goals tend to be. I remember asking one guy why he had chosen “two million books” as his number and his answer was because someone else he knew had done one and a half million. He’d just pulled the number out of his ass! (And of course, he never came close to this number because almost no books do).

Second, I am struck by what they didn’t say. They didn’t say “Success is making something amazing that really helps people” or “Success is creating something that I’m deeply proud of”. All they’re thinking about is some benchmark, rather than thinking about what it takes to even have a chance at hitting such a benchmark: being present, dedicated, pure-hearted, disciplined, creative, self-aware, patient. Someone who comes right out and says they’re chasing a number, competing against someone else, or needing external validation often reveals that they lack those very qualities.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t strive to accomplish great things or to do and be all that you’re capable of—you definitely should. It’s that in my experience, the best work comes out of just that: doing the work. Not in visualizing success. Not in trying to reverse engineer what’s working for someone else. Not in setting a “big hairy audacious goal” as some advise. But in the quiet day-to-dayness of the work. In immersing yourself in the craft, not the charts. In being process-driven, not goal-driven.

It comes from loving the process, not from thirst.

When I was chatting with Buzz Williams, the basketball coach for Texas A&M, on The Daily Stoic Podcast (​listen here​), he talked about the idea of being an everyday guy: “Whatever it is that you’re trying to do, are you tough enough to do that every day?” he asks. “If you’re basing it on talent, well at some point in time it might prevail, but not always. And so if you remove talent, then it comes down to consistency, discipline, and how you are spending your time.”

I’d say when you remove goals, that’s what it comes down to. Do you have the consistency and discipline to show up every day? Are you working on getting better every day?

In ​Discipline Is Destiny​, I write about the practice of Kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement. Always finding some way to make a little progress. Focusing on the joys of getting a little bit better every day. This is the secret to being internally driven, to being Every Day. “Just as one person delights in improving his farm, and another his horse,” Epictetus would say, riffing, as it happens, on Socrates, “so I delight in attending to my improvement day by day.”

I like the way Sam Altman, an entrepreneur who has helped thousands of startups over the years at Y Combinator and then created Open AI, talked about this idea in an interview with Tyler Cowen. “Strive to be internally driven,” Altman said. “Driven to compete with yourself, not with other people. If you compete with other people, you end up in this mimetic trap, and you sort of play this tournament. Even if you ‘win’, you lose. But if you’re competing with yourself, and all you’re trying to do is be the best possible version you can—there’s no limit to how far that can drive someone to perform.”

And Sam has done pretty well for himself, hasn’t he?

In a way, I think getting rid of goals is actually more ambitious.

Goals, by their nature, are finite and fleeting. Once you achieve them, what then? You might experience a brief moment of pleasure and satisfaction, but soon, you’re left with two choices: either stop doing the thing altogether, having reached your destination, or realize that there is no destination, that you keep going and going and going.

You just keep looking for new ways to challenge yourself, new ways to do things, going towards the harder way, as ​we talked about a couple of weeks ago​. You just keep showing up and getting better, wherever that leads.

This not only keeps things interesting, but it insulates you, ever so slightly, from outcomes, ego, self-doubt, and misfortune. It’s not that you don’t care about results—it’s that you have a kind of trump card. Your successes don’t go to your head because you know you’re capable of more. Your failures don’t destroy you because you are sure there wasn’t anything more you could have done.

You don’t control what happens to you, what adversity gets placed in your path, but you always control whether you show up every day and give your best or not. No one can stop you from that.

You don’t have to end up number one in your class. Or win everything, every time. In fact, winning is not particularly important. What matters is that you gave everything, because anything less is to cheat the gift.

The gift of your potential. The gift of the opportunity. The gift of the craft you’ve been introduced to. The gift of the responsibility entrusted to you.

Immerse yourself in the work, in the process, in the daily practices that make up the bulk of your life.

Forget goals.

Be process-oriented.

Be internally driven.

Be Every Day.

Some people travel for the food.

Others for the nightlife.

Some travel for work.

Others travel to get away.

I travel for the swimming.

I mean that’s not really why I travel–I’m usually on the road because I’m giving a talk or I have a meeting–but if I am on the road, what I am looking for is somewhere to swim.

Believe it or not, I actually planned the ​Stillness Is The Key​ book tour around cities that had cool athletic club pools. In 2019, I swam at the ​Olympic Club in San Francisco​, the Washington Athletic Club in Seattle, the basement pool at the University Club in DC (I prefer the William H. Rumsey Natatorium near the Library of Congress), the New York Athletic Club overlooking Central Park and the Denver Athletic Club, too.

I once accepted an offer from my Dutch publisher to speak in Amsterdam on the condition that they show me a good time while I was there. And by that I meant, to their surprise, that they’d find me a cool swimming pool. (I am in Toronto, Vancouver, London, Dublin and Rotterdam in November. ​You can get tickets here​…or give me some swimming recommendations).

It was Robert Greene who first got me hooked in 2007. I grew up on swim teams but had fallen out of the habit in favor of running. When I started working in Downtown Los Angeles for American Apparel, he told me to join the Los Angeles Athletic Club because it has one of the greatest swimming pools in the country. It’s one of the oldest athletic clubs in the country (1888!) and the pool they built in 1912 is an engineering marvel–8 feet deep, six stories off the streets below, beneath a glass atrium and chandelier you’ve seen in a million movies and never known where it was from.

But the real secret, he told me, was their reciprocal benefits. I will never in my life be able to afford (let alone be invited) to join the New York Athletic Club…but for like $100 a month, my membership to the Los Angeles Athletic Club got me in the door. (To be clear, it’s a back door…they make us plebes use a special staircase so as not to touch the regular members).

Swimming laps at the Los Angeles Athletic Club

It was also Robert who told me that the ocean rock pools in Sydney were bucket-list-level good more than 10 years ago. I was blown away on my first trip there in 2013–I think I accepted the speaking gig just to have an excuse to go. This summer, I brought my family for my two talks in Sydney and Melbourne and crossed a bunch off my list.

I’d already done Icebergs and Bronte and Clovelly but this time I also squeezed in South Curl and North Curl, Manly, as well as a short swim at Cook and Philip Park and the Melbourne Public Baths.

Over the years and hundreds of thousands of miles on the road, I’ve seen some amazing pools and ponds and swimming holes and lakes. Hampstead Heath. Balmorhea. Yrjönkatu in Helsinki (where you have to swim naked). The Biltmore in Downtown LA. Gellert in Budapest. Sydney’s Olympic Pool. Badeschiff (a pool floating in the River Spree). The saltwater pool at the New Orleans Athletic Club. The Venetian Pool in Coral Gables. Swimming against the current and the billowing Texas rice plants in the San Marcos River. ​Slide Rock in Sedona​. ​Lake Tahoe​. ​The Blue Hole in New Mexico​. Jacob’s Well. And countless streams and oceans and bays and hotel pools and public parks.

But why? What’s so special about swimming?

Sure, it’s low-impact whole-body exercise and it’s good for you to be active, but I consider all that as a bonus.

What I love about swimming is that it’s one of the few places on Earth where screens can’t reach you. My phone doesn’t ring. My eyes can’t wander to the big TV playing CNN or CNBC the way they do at the gym. My eyes can’t wander at all actually, they stay locked at the bottom of the pool or the pond, ‘prisoner of the black line’ to paraphrase Joni Mitchell. It’s just the rhythm of kick, stroke, breath over and over ahead in a kind of wonderful, active meditation.

I forget whether it was at the 24 Hour Fitness off 35th or the YMCA off Town Lake in Austin, but someone came up to me once and said they were reading my book ​Ego is the Enemy​. I said thank you and laughed, telling them that I’d written a good chunk of the book in that very pool. They were surprised but it’s true, just like when I run, I’m amazed at the words that pop into my head when I have gotten up and left the computer to do something other than writing. And because I can’t immediately write it down, I have to run the phrases or the idea through over and over again…often forgetting my lap count in the process.

Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to keep swimming.

It’s not the only problem I’ve solved in the pool. I’ve had investment ideas. I’ve planned difficult conversations. I’ve gotten over grudges. I’ve calmed down. I’ve gotten much-needed space.

I remember waking up early one morning in Los Angeles, while on the book tour for ​Stillness Is The Key​. It was the day I was supposed to find out whether I’d hit the bestseller lists…or not. Glancing at the home screen of my phone, I could see there were texts from my agent and from my editor. I knew they could either be congratulations or condolences, but instead of checking, I took the elevator down to the 6th floor and swam for a mile. It was just another ordinary, rewarding swim.

I came back to the room and found out that not only had I hit the New York Times Bestseller list for the first time, but I’d debuted at #1. It was wonderful news but I was prouder of that little act of discipline that preceded it–ignoring the phone, insisting on that stillness. And if I hadn’t hit the list? I’d have been glad for the wonderful morning swim all the same, glad that I hadn’t ruined it.

It’s fitting, too, because I wrote in ​Stillness Is The Key​ that there are few better ways to settle yourself in the present moment—to wash away the distractions and the noise and the troubles of everyday life—than through being in or around water. More specifically, natural water. There’s just something about it. The sight of it contrasted against the environment it’s in. The sound of it. The feel of it closing in on you once you finally take the plunge.

Sometimes I think that half the victory of swimming is just that–the initial jump or dive in. The payoff is different depending on the season. In the summer, Barton Springs in Austin is a welcome relief against the heat. But in the winter–Robert and I once went on a snowy Austin morning a few hours before I got married–the reward is different. The aliveness creeps back into your body as you shiver to get warm, invigorated by doing something so crazy.

It was actually that abrupt entrance into a cold body of water that drew Seneca back to the Tiber River year after year. A self-proclaimed “cold-water enthusiast”, Seneca “celebrated each new year by taking a plunge into the canal.” Seneca couldn’t have known any of the since-proven health benefits of a cold plunge. He wasn’t competing or on a swim team. He wasn’t going down to the canal to literally clean himself, but he was starting the year clean. Even better, he was starting it with a challenge.

Water played a big role in Marcus Aurelius’ life, too. He liked to spend time in the many bath houses across the Roman Empire, where he’d wash off the dust of everyday life. In Budapest, you can still sit in baths that draw from the same thermal pools that Marcus would have used.

In her incredible book, ​Why We Swim​, Bonnie Tsui discusses the human inclination toward water and uncovers the deeper instincts that pull us to it. When Bonnie came on The Daily Stoic Podcast (it’s one of my favorite episodes, ​you should definitely give it a listen​), I asked her to share a discovery she made while writing the book that stood out to her, even as a lifelong swimmer and water enthusiast. “I loved learning about how we are biologically driven to respond to certain set points in the environment—that our brains love to be near water and blue spaces,” she said. “We love immersion and the feeling of physically being in water because our brains produce more alpha waves—those wavelengths associated with relaxation, calm, and creativity—when we are merely listening to or looking at it. There is a benefit to both body and mind to get in and swim.”

For all of these reasons, swimming has been a predominantly solitary practice for most of my life. But as I’ve gotten older and have a family of my own, it’s become something we all do together. In the last month alone, we’ve done the Blue Hole in Georgetown, Landa Park in New Braunfels, Barton Springs, Deep Eddy, and Krause Springs. At first, the kids are hesitant to jump in, maybe a little intimidated by a rope swing or a diving board. The same goes for us as parents, only the night before. How will the day go? Will it be a disaster? Isn’t there a bunch to pack up?

But after they, after we, work up the courage and do it? Well, you’re always glad you did.

I guess that’s the real message of this post–to pass along the wonderful habit that Robert Greene gave to me all those years ago. It made my life better and I bet it will make yours better, too.

It wasn’t exactly a nervous breakdown, but it was something close.

Around the time I was finishing ​Ego is the Enemy​, I ran into a wall.

I had just watched American Apparel implode. I had lost a mentor and friend I had looked up to and cared about (who had let me know the feeling was not mutual). The talent agency I had started at went bust, too.

These people who said they “saw themselves in me” turned out to be people they didn’t want to be. I myself was becoming someone I did not want to be. I was working all the time. I was splitting my time between Austin and Los Angeles. I was angry and stressed all the time. I worked late, taking and making phone calls well past midnight, as I had seen Dov Charney do for years (something ​I wrote about recently​). To say I was burned out was an understatement.

I remember a panic attack because the wifi wasn’t connecting. I remember being too tired to think. I remember being glued to my phone. I remember juggling way too many balls at the same time. I remember coming across a quote from Bertrand Russell that the first sign of losing your mind was the belief that your work was terribly, terribly important.

I ended up telling this story at the beginning of ​Ego is the Enemy​, but it’s something I had to work out in my actual life, too. Therapy. Some Workaholics Anonymous meetings. Some not-so-fun conversations with my future wife (I’m sure they were not fun for her either, but anyway, I was the one on the receiving end of the hard truths).

Basically, like a lot of people, I had worked myself pretty close to the edge. I’m lucky in that I didn’t quite go over the side.

This is why I don’t like a lot of the hustle porn and grind culture that entrepreneurs and influencers try to sell young people. It’s not healthy. In private, it’s not glamorous. It doesn’t lead to anyone’s best work. In fact, it usually prevents people from doing their best work.

Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, brought much-needed order and routine to the life of his queen. He streamlined processes and took up a share of the burdens that had previously fallen on Victoria alone. Indeed, many of the so-called Victorian traits of the era originated with him. He was disciplined, fastidious, ambitious, old school.

Under his pressing, their schedule became one meeting, dispatch, and social obligation after another. Albert was almost constantly busy, working so much that he occasionally vomited from stress. Never shirking a responsibility or an opportunity, he took on every bit of power his wife was willing to share. In turn, they seized every formal and informal bit of influence the monarchy had in the British Empire at that time. They were a pair of workaholics and proud of it.

As Albert wrote to an advisor, he spent hours a day reading newspapers in German, French, and English. “One can let nothing pass,” he said, “without losing the connection and coming in consequence to wrong conclusions.” He was right, the stakes were certainly high. His expert understanding of the international situation helped Britain avoid being drawn into the U.S. Civil War.

But the truth was, Albert threw himself equally hard into projects of much less importance. Organizing the Great Exhibition of 1851, a nearly six-month-long carnival that showed off the wonders of the British Empire, consumed years of his life. A few days before it opened, he wrote to his stepmother, “I am more dead than alive from overwork.” It was, to be certain, a beautiful and memorable event, but his health never recovered.

He and his wife knew no moderation and had little fun. “I go on working at my treadmill, as life seems to me,” Albert said in 1861. It’s not a bad description of the exhausting and repetitive life he and Victoria led. Starting in 1840, Victoria bore nine children in seventeen years, four of whom were born in consecutive years. In a time when women still regularly died during childbirth (anesthesia—chloroform—only became available for her eighth pregnancy), Victoria, who was a mere five feet tall, was constantly pregnant. Even with the benefits of limitless household help, she bore an enormous physical burden on top of her duties as queen. Upon her death, it was found that she was suffering from a prolapsed uterus and a hernia that must have caused her incredible pain without end.

There’s nothing wrong with having a large family—the throne did need heirs—but it never seemed to have occurred to the couple that they had any say in the matter. “Man is a beast of burden,” Albert wrote to his brother, “and he is only happy if he has to drag his burden and if he has little free will. My experience teaches me every day to understand the truth of this more and more.” As a result, his and Victoria’s existence was hardly one of privilege or relaxation or freedom. It was instead an endless cycle of obligation after obligation, done at a breakneck pace that the two of them inflicted on themselves.

It is a testament to their affection for each other that their marriage survived. Victoria was at least aware of the deleterious effects all this work had on Albert. She wrote of the consequences of his “over-love of business” on their relationship, and she also noticed that his health was flagging. His racing mind kept him awake at night, his stomach cramped, and his skin drooped.

Instead of listening to these warning signs, he soldiered on for years, working harder and harder, forcing his body to comply. And then, suddenly, it quit on him. His strength failed. He drifted into incoherency, and at 10:50 p.m. on December 14, 1861, Albert took his three final breaths and died. The cause? Crohn’s disease, exacerbated by extreme stress. He had literally worked his guts out.

Is that what you want to be? A workhorse that draws its load until it collapses and dies, still shod and in the harness? Is that what you were put on this planet for?

Remember, the main cause of injury for elite athletes is not tripping and falling. It’s not collisions. It’s overuse. Pitchers and quarterbacks throw out their arms. Basketball players blow out their knees. Others just get tired of the grinding hours and the pressure. Michael Phelps prematurely ended his swimming career for this reason—despite all the gold medals, he never wanted to get in a pool again. It’s hard to blame him. He put everything, including his own sanity and health, second to shaving seconds off his times.

We think that to be great at what you do requires complete and total dedication. That there’s no time for anything else.

Nonsense.

After the implosion of my personal and professional life in 2014/2015, I moved to a ranch in Texas. I started a family. I started keeping more regular hours. I put less into my work. And you know what? My work has gotten better. (Cal Newport would call this ​“Slow Productivity” in his book​, which you should take a break from your work and ​go read​).

In fact, some of my biggest creative breakthroughs came to me when I was doing anything but working. The idea for ​Ego Is The Enemy​ came to me while I was doing laps in a pool in Austin (which I talk about ​here​). The idea for the Stoic Virtues series struck me while on a hike in the Lost Pines forest in Bastrop with my family. A few weeks later on vacation in Florida, the idea for ​The Daily Dad​ came to me as I built a sandcastle with my son.

I’ve been repeatedly gifted with ideas—from the muses, from my own subconscious, I don’t know—when I least expect it. In Zen, they talk about the problem of “too much willful will,” basically, trying too hard, being too intentional. Real breakthroughs come when you’re not so controlling, when you let go. I find this to be true in my own life. By not putting my work first, by not taking it all so seriously, I’ve been able to reach for and hold on to more than I was with a very tight grasp.

Don’t get me wrong, executing projects at a high level requires an immense amount of work and uninterrupted focus. It requires being at the office. It requires trying very hard to get it right. But the point is that none of that would have been possible without first letting go a little, without deciding to take a hike or go to the beach.

The best of the best know this.

In ​Stillness Is The Key​, I tell the story of Eilud Kipchoge, possibly the greatest distance runner ever to live. Kipchoge is known for actively working to make sure he is not overworking. In training, he deliberately does not give his full effort, saving that instead for the few times per year when he races. He prefers instead to train at 80 percent of his capacity on occasion to 90 percent—to maintain and preserve his longevity and sanity as an athlete. Runners know this is called threshold training, but it has major lifestyle implications too. When Michael Phelps came back to swimming after his breakdown in 2012, it was possible because he was willing to reimagine his approach to training with more balance.

You are not a beast of burden. You are not meant to be ridden into the ground, shot and then replaced by the next horse.

Yes, we have important duties to provide for our families and to be a reliable coworker, boss, employee. Many of us have talents and gifts so extraordinary that we owe it to ourselves and the world to express and fulfill them. But we’re not going to be able to do that if we’re not taking care of ourselves, or if we have stretched ourselves to the breaking point.

It’s important to remind ourselves that life is much more of a marathon than it is a sprint. In a way, this is the distinction between confidence and ego. Can you trust yourself and your abilities enough to keep something in reserve? Can you protect the stillness and the inner peace necessary to win the longer race of life?

The email you think you need so desperately to respond to can wait. Your screenplay does not need to be hurried, and you can even take a break between it and the next one. The only person truly requiring you to spend the night at the office is yourself. It’s okay to say no. Your interior life will thank you. You’ll be much more clear-headed and equipped to do a good job when you’re not weak from complete and utter overwork.

It’s human being, not human doing, for a reason.

The most surefire way to make yourself more fragile, to cut your career short, is to be undisciplined about rest and recovery. To push yourself too hard, too fast. To overtrain and to pursue the false economy of overwork.

To last, to be great, you have to understand how to rest. After all, it’s not ambition or skill that is going to set you apart but sanity, balance and the discipline of your discipline.