I initially worried that I wouldn’t accomplish as much using experiences, but paradoxically, I’ve accomplished more. Here are my guesses as to why.

1. The desire to keep working: I don’t experience burn out or discouragement like I did under my goal paradigm. With larger goals, I was keenly aware of how far I was from accomplishing them. That can be discouraging. After I switched, I still have goals but more as an excuse to have a certain kind of experience.
2. The goal posts don’t move: Another problem with goals is that after the immediate high of accomplishment, you don’t really feel that different. Goals have this illusion of completion that they never come through on. All there is after any goal is another goal. Now that I focus on experiences, each day is about renewing the things that make me feel like me. There is no illusion that what I have done is finished. The work is the reward, the renewal. 
3. Losing that deep concentration of focusing on one or two goals at a time worried me the most. So much progress is made with that focus, especially the initial burst. What I didn’t realize before was the trade off for that progress was losing sight of my other goals. For example, if I spent three months drafting a collection of poems, I did almost nothing else. Once I had time to return to my other goals, I had forgotten the reasoning behind some decision, forgot something I’d already learned, or lost contact with someone who was helping me. Switching from one goal to the other, I would lose a lot of momentum. Now all my efforts have more continuity. This might not work for everyone. You have to be able to compartmentalize. It is also hard not to throw everything else to the side when a bout of inspiration comes. I’m still working on that one. 

Check out other work in the Personal Ethic series here.