Competitive goals can lead to burnout. Michael Jordan who is a compulsive competitor, exhausted himself in continually reinventing new ways to spark the fire in his enthusiasm.
Destination goals, such as, “I’ll get to this particular place by x date” tend to be difficult to maintain since the reward exist in the non-existent future.
Process goals, are increments of cumulative experiences that instantly offer rewards in the present of now. For example, when I first started day trading, I made no attempt to make a lot of money immediately. My immediate goal was to learn market dynamics without suffering major financial losses.
I convinced myself that once I learned how to not loose money, probability favors my chances of starting to make money!.
This approach allowed me to (1) maintain my self-confidence, (2) stay in the game without capital blow-out, (3) develop a non-emotional response to rapid fire decision making, (4) handle small draw down with minimum psychological upheaval, (5) visualize the feeling that I will be doing this for the next 50 years, and (6) secure the knowledge that my journey was a life long commitment to learning.
I believe it is good to set smaller challenges that generate rewards in the present and not in the non-existant future and let the long term goal of consistence of profit flow naturally from a great set of process actions, such as system design, indicator design, system testing, placement of trades, etc.
You have to have the ability to change and see how the markets are changing and adapt to it. That’s a constant process. That’s why I think you see some people do well for four or five years and then just disappear.