Why I Stopped Setting Goals and Started Tending What Matters
For those exhausted by the cycle of achieving, measuring, and asking "what next?"
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about what it shifted in you.
If your January already feels like a list of things you should be doing, this post is for you.
I have a PhD in Educational Research. I have spent years studying how people learn, how they change, how they move from where they are to where they want to be. I have read the literature on goal setting. I understand SMART goals, stretch goals, process goals versus outcome goals. I have taught this material to graduate students.
None of it works for me anymore.
This is not a failure of the frameworks. The research is solid. Goals work for many people in many contexts. But somewhere in my forties, I noticed that goal s-tting had stopped serving my actual life. The goals I set felt increasingly arbitrary. The ones I achieved brought less satisfaction than I expected. The ones I missed carried more shame than they deserved.
So I stopped setting goals.
I started tending domains instead.
What Is a Domain of Attention?
A goal is something you achieve or fail to achieve.
You run the marathon or you do not. You publish the book or you do not. You hit the revenue target or you do not. Goals have endpoints. They are binary. They invite measurement.
A domain of attention is different.
A domain is an area of your life that deserves sustained care. You do not achieve a domain. You tend it. You show up to it. You let it teach you what it needs. A domain does not have an endpoint because it is not a project. It is an ongoing relationship.
Think of it like a garden.
You do not achieve a garden. You tend it. Some seasons you plant. Some seasons you harvest. Some seasons you let the soil rest. The garden is never done, and that is not a failure. That is the nature of gardens.
Domains of attention work the same way.
My 3 Domains for 2026
After much reflection, I have identified 3 domains that deserve my sustained attention this year.
Walking as Spiritual Practice
This is my personal practice. The source that feeds everything else. It includes my daily contemplative walks, my mantra work with the PATH rule of life, my attention to what walking reveals. This is the foundation. Without this domain, the other domains have nothing to draw from.
Guiding Contemplative Pilgrimage
This is my work of holding space for others on the path. It includes the contemplative walking retreat I am leading on the Le Puy Camino route in September 2026. It also includes spiritual direction, companioning, and the way I show up for seekers who are walking their own thresholds. This domain is about service.
Teaching and Writing
This is how I share what walking and guiding reveal. It includes this Substack, the Rewilding the Soul ecospirituality program beginning in March, and whatever else emerges through the practice of putting words to experience. This domain is about translation. Taking what I notice in the first two domains and making it available to others.
These 3 domains are not separate compartments.
They are deeply interconnected.
How the Domains Feed Each Other
Here is what I have noticed.
The domains are not parallel tracks. They form a circle.
Walking reveals what I teach and write. Just this week, an 8-mile walk through a Paris park revealed encounters with ravens, the smell of woodsmoke, and a f these became material for reflection. Each will become teaching.
Teaching and writing prepares me to guide.
The act ofarticulating what I have noticed clarifies it. When I write about contemplative walking, I understand it more deeply. That deeper understanding makes me a better guide for others.
Guiding deepens my own walking.
Every time I hold space for another person’s pilgrimage, I discover something about the path I had not seen before. Their questions become my questions. Their struggles illuminate my own.
The circle continues.
Walking feeds teaching. Teaching prepares guiding. Guiding deepens walking. None of them is the point by itself. Together, they form something whole.
Why Domains Instead of Goals
Let me be concrete about what changes when you shift from goals to domains.
With goals, I might say: I will walk 500 miles this year. That is measurable. That is specific. That is achievable. If I walk 499 miles, I have failed. If I walk 501 miles, I have succeeded, and then the goal is done. What next?
With domains, I say: I will tend my walking practice this year.
That is ongoing. That invites attention rather than measurement. If I walk less in winter because my body needs rest, that is not failure. That is tending. If I walk more in spring because the land is calling, that is also tending.
The domain remains.
The relationship continues.
Goals create pressure to perform. Domains create invitation to show up.
Goals end when achieved. Domains continue as long as they matter.
Goals measure success by outcome. Domains measure faithfulness by attention.
I am not against goals entirely. Sometimes a specific target serves a purpose. But for the deepest things in my life, my spiritual practice, my service to others, my creative work, domains serve better than goals.
How to Identify Your Own Domains
If this framework resonates, here is how you might identify your own domains of attention.
Ask: What deserves my sustained care this year?
Not what do I want to achieve. Not what would look impressive. What actually deserves my ongoing attention? What areas of my life are asking for tending rather than completing?
Ask: What feeds what?
Look for connections. Your domains are probably not isolated. One likely nourishes another. Understanding these connections helps you see why they all matter and how neglecting one affects the others.
Ask: What would I tend even if no one noticed?
Goals often carry external validation. Domains are often quieter. They are the things you would care for even if no one applauded, even if no metric captured them, even if they never showed up on a resume.
Start with 3.
More than 3 becomes scattered. Fewer than 3 might be too narrow. 3 domains give you enough range to hold your complexity while remaining focused enough to actually tend them.
The Invitation
I am not here to tell you that goal setting is wrong.
If goals work for you, keep using them. But if you have felt the exhaustion I have, the arbitrary targets, the binary success-or-failure, the endless cycle of achieving and then asking what's next, consider trying something different this year.
Consider tending instead of achieving.
Consider domains instead of goals.
Consider showing up with attention instead of measuring outcomes.
You do not need a better goal.
You need to know what deserves your attention.
On Friday, I will explore what happens when you commit to one practice and go deep rather than sampling many. If you want to share your own domains of attention, I would love to hear them in the comments.
If this resonates, I would love to hear what threshold you have recently crossed and how the ordinary is meeting you.
Walk With Me
If my writing resonates, I invite you to subscribe to Where Insight Meets Earth, my weekly reflections on contemplative walking, ecospirituality, and embodied practices for navigating what overwhelms us.
If you want to delve more deeply into this, I am launching the Rewilding the Soul EcoSpirituality Certificate at Cherry Hill Seminary in March 2026—a year-long journey exploring Earth kinship through contemplative practice. Learn more here.
In September 2026, I’m leading a contemplative walking retreat on France’s ancient Le Puy Camino, seven days of silence, movement, and practices for metabolizing what sitting cannot, in the most beautiful landscape you can imagine, on a 1,000-year-old pilgrimage path. Details here.
Hit reply anytime. I read and respond to every message.
~ Jeffrey