Most of what I care about takes years. This is a list of those things.

It started as an Impossible List, Joel Runyon’s idea that Thomas Frank later made famous: goals set just past what feels possible, crossed off in public and replaced with harder ones. I liked it and distrusted it in equal measure. Oliver Burkeman warns about treating a life as a queue of things to get through, always living for the moment after the next one. A list of goals can easily become exactly that.

So this is a slower version. Rich Roll says his spirit animal is the tortoise. He has never done anything significant in less than ten years, and he thinks we overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in a decade. His coach used to tell him the prize doesn’t go to the fastest person. It goes to the person who slows down the least. That’s where the name comes from.

These are my goals and practices. I put them somewhere public because it keeps me honest. Some will look like a lot to you and some like nothing much. That’s the point: a goal only means something measured against where you started.

  • Few things, kept for a long time.
  • Markers along the way. A marker is where I am, and missing the next one is fine.
  • Some things are goals and get crossed off. Some are practices and never do.
  • The practice is the point. The number is how I know I'm still practising.
  • Things can be put down. When they are, they move to Let go with a date. They don't quietly disappear.

Someone once told Rich Roll: don't fear work that has no end.