3.5.1 ‘Goal-orientation’ versus ‘Process-orientation’

I am making progress on my third piano sonata. It will be my best work to date, by a rather large margin, and, though I have a standing order to myself to get in at least 15 minutes a day, I am already finding myself not wanting to get up after such a short amount of time—and sure enough, putting more into it. Making the small goal of 15 minutes a day seems achievable, yet allows the opportunity to ‘get into the flow’ and continue for longer.

I am not going to make any kind of time limit for finishing the piece. I simply want to put in a little every day. It’s interesting that despite all of Rand’s goal-oriented rhetoric, even she understood that yes, you have to have a goal in order to integrate your processes, but on a day to day basis, you have to be focused not so much on the goal, but on the process. You have to be not so much ‘goal-oriented’ as ‘process-oriented.’

November 2003
Based on an email to Steve Clarian