The Target Keeps Moving

I have a friend who runs marathons.

He trained for two years to qualify for Boston. The whole thing was an obsession — early morning runs, special shoes, a spreadsheet tracking every mile. He called me the morning he qualified. I don't think I've ever heard him more electric. He was loud. He was happy in a way that felt complete.

Boston was nine months later. He finished it. Called me from the finish line.

He was already talking about running Berlin.

That's not a character flaw. That's just how the target works. Every time you reach it, it moves. Not because you're ungrateful or broken or chasing the wrong thing. Because the whole system is designed that way. The moment you close the gap between where you are and where you want to be, the want recalibrates. It always has. It always will.

I spent a long time being confused by this. I'd hit a number in sales and feel good for about two weeks before I was restless again. I'd land a client I'd worked toward for months and spend the drive home calculating who I should call next. There was always a next thing, and it always mattered more than the thing I just did.

I thought I was doing something wrong.

I don't think that anymore. I think I was just measuring the wrong thing.

Here's the difference between happiness and usefulness. Happiness is a feeling. Usefulness is a fact.

When you're useful to someone — genuinely, specifically useful — there's no lag. You don't have to wonder if it happened. You can see it in real time. Someone's problem goes away. A decision gets clearer. A weight they were carrying gets lighter. And in that moment you're not thinking about the next thing. There's nothing to chase because you're already there. You're already doing the thing.

The target doesn't move because usefulness is in the doing, not the arriving.

I'm not telling you not to want things. I want things. I want to build something that matters. I want to give my daughter a life that feels abundant. I want to hit the big number and have a real conversation with the person who gets the outcome they needed. All of that is real, and none of it is wrong.

What I'm telling you is: if your only scoreboard is how you feel, you're going to spend most of your life behind. Not because you're doing it wrong. Because the game is set up that way. The moment you get there, there becomes somewhere else.

Usefulness is a different scoreboard. It doesn't move on you.

My dad was a connector. He introduced people for forty years. He'd match two people at a dinner party and then forget about it by Tuesday. He wasn't doing it to feel good. He was doing it because he was genuinely interested in people and kept a running mental map of who needed what and who could help. He just enjoyed the match. Half the time he'd get a thank-you call three months later for something he'd already stopped thinking about.

I asked him once if he ever got tired of it. He said he didn't get tired of it because it didn't cost him anything.

I think that's it. That's the whole thing.

When what you're doing is genuinely useful — when it actually helps someone — it doesn't deplete you the same way the happiness chase does. Because you're not waiting for a feeling. You're already in the feeling. The doing is the thing.

The marathons are still worth running. The milestones are still worth hitting. I'm not building a case against ambition. I'm building a case for what to measure alongside it.

Because on the days when I can't feel the progress — and there are a lot of those days when you're building something new from scratch — the question I go back to is a simple one: was I useful today? Did something get better because I was in the room? Did someone walk away from a conversation with more than they had before?

If the answer is yes, the target doesn't matter that much.

The target keeps moving. The usefulness stays.