Kyūdō, the Japanese martial art of archery, offers an alternative philosophy where aims matter more than goals, and where success is the process itself.

“The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed.”

the master encouraged him to forget about the goal, and to focus on the way he was aiming — how he held the bow, the way he positioned his feet, the way he was breathing while releasing the arrow.

As James Clear puts it: “It is not the target that matters. It is not the finish line that matters. It is the way we approach the goal that matters. Everything is aiming.”

Thomas Fuller (1608 – 1661), one of the first English writers to have enough patrons to be able to live by his pen, wrote: “A good archer is not known by their arrows but by their aim.”

When we focus on our aims rather than our end goals, we learn how to design a daily life where the process itself is so fulfilling that it doesn’t matter whether we ever reach an hypothetical finish line. Success is enjoying the process.