Outcome based targets have their place, don’t get me wrong. To build a reading habit, it’s helpful to set yourself a target of “x many pages a day”. Its purpose is to build your focus for reading for longer periods - at the start, this is a good thing and it’s okay for understanding to come later. But, after a while, you need to progress from simply being able to read a certain number of pages without losing focus to actually understanding what you’re reading. The same goes for writing based goals. As a goalpost they are useful, but just because you can write 100 words an hour doesn’t mean those words are going to be good enough to drive your work forward. Sometimes we need to go slower: there are times when a single paper understood beats 10 papers read. There are times when 100 words written while deep in thought over the course of an afternoon beats writing 500 words with shallow or no thought before lunchtime. If you’re only focused on achieving the outcome that defines you...