I can’t remember having a goal. An actual goal.

There are things I’ve wanted to do, but if I didn’t do them I’d be fine with that too. There are targets that would have been nice to hit, but if I didn’t hit them I wouldn’t look back and say I missed them.

I don’t aim for things that way.

I do things, I try things, I build things, I want to make progress, I want to make things better for me, my company, my family, my neighborhood, etc. But I’ve never set a goal. It’s just not how I approach things.

A goal is something that goes away when you hit it. Once you’ve reached it, it’s gone. You could always set another one, but I just don’t function in steps like that.

When you shift from 1st to 2nd, 1st is behind you. Then from 2nd to 3rd, 2nd is behind you. I approach things continuously, not in stops. I just want to keep going — whatever happens along the way is just what happens.

I consider Basecamp, my current business, as one continuous line back from when I sold the first thing I ever remember making — a logo for $50 (which happened to be for Andrei Heramischuk— who knew!). I was 16 or something like that at the time. I didn’t have a goal to make two logos, or to be able to charge $5000 for a logo. I just made logos. And then I made software. And then I made web sites. And now I make software again. No goals in the process that I remember.

I just worked at whatever I was working on and ended up wherever I am. I continue to approach work and life that same way today.

If I’ve used the word goal, I didn’t mean it that way. It was just the word I picked, a synonym for something else.

I really like what Jim Coudal said about goals:

That pretty much sums it up for me.