A Note on Goals and Gratefulness

Have you ever spent years working toward a goal, only to feel like you lost something the moment you achieved it? I have—and it was a strange feeling.

For context, we had a family goal that took 2.5 years of steady effort. Now that it’s done, instead of feeling relieved or accomplished, there’s this unexpected sense of absence.

For 120 weeks straight, there was always one more task, one more step, one more thing related to this goal on our calendar. Now that the list is empty, I feel strangely empty too.

What makes this even more confusing is that it doesn’t feel like the usual “hollow victory”—the kind of goal you think will bring deep satisfaction but ends up feeling flat the moment you reach it.

This felt different—but not that far off, either.

It reminded me of something I’ve known for a long time and somehow forgot along the way: no number of goals—big or small—can fill an inner emptiness if you’re not already grounded in what you have.

So here’s where I’m choosing to land: be grateful for what I have and keep working toward what I want.

Monthly Challenges

1. Daily reading

2. N/A

For October, I stuck to only one challenge: daily reading. It’s the 6th time this year I’ve tried to get back on my daily reading habit.

And I might have succeeded, despite the fact I only had a 50% success rate (15 daily reading sessions out of 31).

What makes it a success, you ask?

Well, with all the disruption caused by the changes in my family’s schedule since my kid upgraded from kindergarten to school in September, I finally managed to rebuild my morning time from ground up:

1. Rise and shine around 6:15 am—pee (call me outdated, but this isthe first thing I do in the morning instead of grabbing the phone 🤷‍♂️), wash my face and teeth, and then read for 15-20 minutes.

2. Wake up the rest of the family at 7:00 am—brew the coffee, help prepare breakfast for the little one, prepare the snacks for school, and leave the house just in time to get at school by 8:00 am.

3. Exercise after 8:00 am—I have 1 hour before work to go for a run or a walk, and I block this time to make sure I’m keeping up with my health goals.

This morning's structure seems to serve me well for the moment, and I will stick to it until the next major glitch in the schedule.

It’s worth mentioning that the system is not perfect, and that’s ok. I keep the boundaries flexible and try not to beat myself too bad when I oversleep, are late to school, or miss a run.

Well-Being

Objective: Finish an indoor Super Sprint Triathlon.

• KR1: Swim 400m at an average pace of 2:30min/100m.

• KR2: Bike 10km at an average speed of 25km/h.

• KR3: Run 2.5km at an average pace of 5:00min/km.

• KR4: Finish the Super Sprint Triathlon in under 50 minutes.

Results

Although I allocated time in the morning to work on my health goals, I haven’t made any significant progress on the key results, as they require me to be indoors.

However, this is not a lost battle, as I still have time to get a gym subscription by the end of the year and work on these key results.

In fact, the gym subscription is key to getting me in motion for the Olympic Triathlon next year.

Initiatives

One important aspect in October was to consolidate a sustainable rhythm for my running sessions, which I achieved by doing them in the morning, after dropping my kid off at school, and before starting work.

A key difference from how I used to do things until now is that I was running before the rest of the family woke up. And doing so is no longer sustainable, as I would have to wake up around 5:00 am.

Another thing that I did was to find a race for Q4, and that is the EchoTrail Ultramarathon at Cluj. The race is on December 1st, which is Romania’s National Day, and I registered for the Half 25k.

It will be a trail run, and it will be my longest run, which makes me both excited and anxious. 🤞

This will help me add more supporting races throughout the year and gradually increase my capacity to run a marathon next year (I know, it’s not mentioned on the list above, but it will get on my radar at the beginning of next year).

Productivity and Mastery

SMART Goal: Fill in the missing knowledge gaps to work effectively with AI by December 31st.

Milestones:

• M0: Earn the DeFi career certificate on Coursera

• M1: Complete the Generative AI for Everyone course

• M2: Apply what I learned in my daily activities

• M3: Teach what I learned in my community

Learning Milestones

October wasn’t such a good month for my learning plan. At least for this learning plan.

Overall, I managed to watch two of the four DeFi courses, but made no progress on the AI learning track.

However, this is not a lost hope, as I did allocate more time to experimenting with AI augmented coding tools, such as Cursor and Warp.

I will deep-dive into over engineering with AI at the beginning of next year, when I’m planning to return to writing my weekly newsletter. If you’re interested in such topics, make sure to subscribe below. 👇

Closing Thoughts

This wraps up my Open Goals updates for October, which turned out to be ideal for strengthening the foundation that will allow me to reach my long-term objectives.

Thanks for following along, and see you in the next issue.

—Alex