THE IDEA

Try to remember what you wanted when you started. Not what you want now, but then. For a lot of people it was modest: replace the old paycheck, get five steady clients, make it through the first year, stop working for someone they didn’t respect, pay the rent from something they built. At the time, that goal felt big and far away.

Chances are you hit it. Maybe a while ago. And chances are you barely noticed, because by the time you got there, you’d already set a new one. Five clients became ten. Replacing the paycheck became doubling it. Surviving the first year became growing in the third. This is a normal and even healthy thing to do. But it has a cost: you spend almost all of your time measuring yourself against a goal you haven’t reached yet, and almost none remembering the ones you have.

That’s why so many people who are, by any fair measure, doing well, still feel like they’re behind. They are behind, compared to this year’s target. They’re far ahead compared to the person who started the business. The feeling comes from which comparison you pick, and most people only ever pick one.

None of this means lowering your ambitions. Keep the new goals. Just stop pretending the old ones don’t count. The person who started this business would look at where you are now and be relieved, and they’re a better judge of how far you’ve come than the person staring at this quarter’s numbers.