There's distance between reality and your intent.

• Your intent shows you what you want to become when you're all grown up. But intent alone won't get things done.
• Breaking your intent into specific goals helps you to figure out where to invest your time and energy, and how to measure your progress along the way.
• A goal is something specific that you want to do. A well-defined goal has the following elements:
• Intent: What are the specific results you want to see for your efforts?Baseline: What points of reference can you use to compare your progress with where you are today?Progress: How will you measure movement towards or away from your goal?

Goals are our lens on the world.

• Goals change what's possible and what happens next.
• Whether big or small, for today or this year, goals change how you spend time and resources.
• Goals are only reachable when you're being realistic about the distance between reality and where you want to go.
• You may measure that distance in time, money, politics, talent, or technology.
• Once you figure out the distance you need to travel, momentum can replace the anxiety of not knowing how to move forward.

Progress is as important to measure as success.

• Many projects are more manageable if you cut them into smaller tasks.
• Sequencing those tasks can mean moving through a tangled web of dependencies.
• A dependency is a condition that has to be in place for something to happen.
• For example, the links throughout this book are dependent on me publishing the content.
• How you choose to measure progress can affect the likelihood of your success.
• Choose a measurement that reinforces your intent. For example:
• If you want to become a better writer, you might measure your progress against a goal like: "Write every day."If you want to write a novel in the next year, your progress may be better measured as: "Write 500 words towards the novel per day."

Most things can be measured by systems or people.