Discipline is useless without Direction

Ten years ago, I woke up at 35 with a quiet, uncomfortable realization: I wasn’t where I thought I’d be.

I had just gone through a divorce. I had a business fail that came close to bankrupting me. I was busy, ambitious, and constantly moving. For years, I told myself I was disciplined. I worked long hours. I stayed busy. But busy is not progress, it’s camouflage. I wasn't being intentional about where I was going.

What stood out wasn’t failure. It was drift.

I hadn’t consciously designed my life. I had just been living it. And when you don’t choose a direction deliberately, you still end up somewhere. It just may not be where you intended to go.

That realization sent me down a path that I’ve been refining ever since. Over the last decade, I’ve built a simple but disciplined approach to goal setting that has completely changed how I operate. It’s not motivational. It’s not complicated. It’s directional, practical, and cumulative.

This is the process I use.

Accidental Lives vs Intentional Lives

Most highly motivated people don’t fail to reach their goals because they lack discipline. They fail because they never clearly decide what they’re building.

You can work incredibly hard and still end up somewhere you didn’t mean to be. Hard work without direction doesn’t compound. It just exhausts you.

I’ve come to believe there are two ways lives get built.

The first is accidental. You react, you stay busy, you make the next logical move, and you look up years later and accept the result.

The second is intentional. You decide, ahead of time, what you want your life to look like, then you reverse engineer your actions to support that outcome.

Goal setting is the mechanism that makes intentional living possible.

Direction Comes Before Discipline

This is the biggest shift in how I think about goals.

Most people start with inputs. They focus on new year resolutions, habits, routines, productivity hacks, and discipline. Those things matter, but only after direction is clear.

Without a destination, it’s impossible to design the right daily behaviors. You can be disciplined in the wrong direction for a very long time.

For me, everything starts with long-term direction. Once that’s clear, discipline becomes obvious instead of forced.

Layer One: Ten-Year Goals Set Direction

I always start with ten-year goals.

These are intentionally big. They’re not meant to create pressure. They’re meant to create clarity.

There’s good data showing that we dramatically overestimate what we can accomplish in one year and massively underestimate what we can accomplish in ten. I’ve found that to be very true in practice.

I spend real time on this. At least once a year, though I try for more, I set aside a full day alone to think deeply about where I want to be in ten years. Life changes, priorities evolve, and perspective sharpens. My ten-year goals do shift over time, but only slightly. If you’re completely rewriting them every year, you probably aren’t thinking deep enough. You may be chasing superficial wants, like "I want to own a Ferrari," rather than defining a true direction. But ultimately, they are your goals, so make them what you want.

I break these goals into categories: family, work, finance, personal, and travel. I try to be as specific as possible. If you want something, clarity matters.

I also use images and vision boards. The brain processes visual cues far faster than abstract text. When you attach a specific image to a goal, you move it from a 'concept' to a 'target.' Specificity creates focus. Vague goals produce vague effort.

This part is especially important if you’re married or building a life with someone else. I use a simple metaphor here. If you were on a cross-country road trip and taking turns driving while the other person slept, you’d both need to agree on the destination. Otherwise, you’ll wake up in very different places.

The same is true if you are building a company. Alignment on long-term direction matters. Everyone needs to be rowing in the same direction.

Layer Two: One-Year Goals Translate Vision Into Reality

Once the ten-year direction is clear, I build goals for the next year.

These have to be radically different from the ten-year vision. While the vision is dreamy, the one-year goals must be binary.

I force strict constraints here. A one-year goal isn't "get fit." It is "complete 200 workouts by December 31st." It isn't "grow the business." It is "hit $1M in ARR."

If I can't measure it, I can't manage it.

One-year goals should either complete a ten-year goal or move you meaningfully onto the path toward one. For example, a ten-year goal might be to build a company doing ten million in revenue. A one-year goal doesn’t need to accomplish that. It might simply be to lock an idea, incorporate the company, or make the first key hire.

A good one-year goal often doesn’t finish the journey. It commits you to it.

I use the same categories here as I do for my ten-year goals. That consistency makes gaps and imbalances obvious.

Layer Three: Daily Inputs Are the Actual Game

This is the most important part of the system.

Goals don’t get accomplished by ambition. They get accomplished by inputs.

My list is short, binary, and unforgiving. It changes every year. The goal is to turn actions into habits. Once the grooves are deep and the behavior becomes automatic, I stop tracking it. This year, I am tracking seven inputs in a Google Sheet every day. I will review this quarterly and update as needed.

The cells use conditional formatting: Yes turns Green. No turns Red.

The goal isn't perfection; it’s visual consistency. However, at the end of the year, I want to see a wall of green. Here are the seven inputs I am tracking in 2026:

• Did I fill out the goal tracker?

  • The Logic: This is my "easy win" to start the process. If I don't fill out the sheet, I have no data. It’s the ignition switch for the day.

• Did I journal?

  • The Logic: I am naturally hyper-critical and future-focused. I use this time specifically for gratitude journaling. It forces me to pause and appreciate what went well yesterday before I start obsessing over what needs to improve today. I know this is valuable, but I struggle to be consistent.

• Did I burn >500 active calories?

  • The Logic: My 2026 goal is to work out 5x a week. The 500-calorie threshold ensures I don't just go through the motions. I have to go hard! There is no credit for 499. Working out is always on my tracker!

• Did I play with my kids for 1 hour?

  • The Logic: When I get home, it’s easy to zone out or answer "just one more email." This is a hard boundary to ensure I don't miss the things that matter. Note: I aim for >4x a week here because long workdays and business travel make 7x a week impossible. I want the goal to be realistic, not a guilt trap.

• Did I stay off my phone at night when I am home from work?

  • The Logic: This is my wife's biggest complaint and my #1 priority habit for the year. I need to be present. I can't be present with a screen in my hand.

• Did I write?

  • The Logic: I want to ship 52 newsletters in 2026. The only way to hit that output is to control the input. I commit to 30–60 minutes of writing daily, regardless of inspiration. Shameless plug: If you like this blog, sign up for the newsletter 👉

• Did I not drink alcohol?

  • The Logic: Drinking is fun and very social, but it steals tomorrow's productivity, discipline, and happiness. My goal isn't zero alcohol, but it is 90% Green days. That means drinking less than three times a month.

• The "Daily Score" Insight. At the end of the row for that day, I give the day a subjective score: -1 (Bad), 0 (OK), or 1 (Great).

After tracking this for a while, the data made one thing painfully clear:

There is a 99% correlation between a row of "Yes" inputs and a "Great Day" score. Conversely, if I drank (more than two drinks) the night before, there is a near 100% chance the next day is a "0" or "-1."

If you get the inputs right, the output takes care of itself.

These are input metrics, not output metrics. I can control these every day, regardless of my mood, the stock market, or my motivation.

Tracking them daily removes emotion from execution. You don’t need to feel motivated. You just need to show up.

This is where most people break down. They set goals but don’t design the daily platform required to support them.

Vision sets direction. Inputs create inevitability.

The System in Practice

I use simple tools to keep everything visible and connected.

I track ten-year and yearly goals using Notion boards. They give me a clean, high-level view of direction and progress. I review ten-year goals annually and yearly goals regularly.

Daily habits are tracked separately. That’s the heartbeat of the system. I look at it every day.

The tools themselves aren’t the point. This framework works in a notebook, a spreadsheet, or any system you like. What matters is that direction, translation, and inputs are all connected.

Just as important is what I don’t track. I don’t micromanage outcomes. I don’t constantly rewrite goals. I focus on showing up for the right inputs consistently and letting time do its work.

Playing the Long Game

After ten years of being intentional about goal setting, my life looks very different than it did at 35.

Not perfect. Not finished. Still evolving.

But it’s no longer accidental.

Since that realization, I’ve checked off the biggest boxes on my original board. I am happily married with four kids. I also hit my professional targets.

When I wrote my first ten-year goals in 2015, Freshly was doing $1M in revenue. My "audacious" target was to reach $100M by 2025. By 2020, we had hit $550M, culminating in the sale to Nestlé for $1.5B.

It was the perfect example of the rule: I massively underestimated the decade.

Ironically, I missed almost every single annual revenue goal along the way. I consistently overestimated the short term, but because the direction was right, the long term took care of itself.

I don't list those achievements to impress you. I list them to prove that design works.

I’m clear about where I’m going. I’m realistic about what progress looks like this year. And I’m disciplined about the daily behaviors that move me forward.

You don’t need to overhaul your entire life to do this. You don’t need more motivation. You need clarity about what you’re building and the patience to let consistent inputs compound.

The hardest part isn’t the execution. It isn't the waking up early or the grinding.

The hardest part is the pause. It is stopping long enough to decide, deliberately, what kind of life you actually want to build.

Stop drifting. Pick a destination. The discipline will follow.