Photography: ground on down by WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot

The word ’success’ is a troublesome one. A self-criticism I would make is that, reading back on previous posts, I’ve sometimes used it like its meaning is obvious, and agreed upon by all. Nothing could be further from the truth: I can’t think of a word that is more vague and subjective than ’success’.

Success, for one person, could mean keeping a record of interesting daily events. For another, it could mean breaking into the Technorati 100. For another, it could mean making a full-time income online.

What’s your definition of success? Could you encapsulate it in a sentence? Most importantly, is it concrete and attainable, or is it a moving target?

Moving target definitions

To grow and grow and grow, get more hits, more subscribers, more page views, is not a useful goal for a blogger or webmaster.

Of course, it’s something we should all be trying to do, but it’s only a means to an end. Treating it like an end in itself is a bit like eating constantly but never feeling satisfied. If you grow to a certain extent, you never achieve complete success, because you could always grow some more.

The same problem plagues millionaires the world over. It’s why so few of them are ever satisfied with the money they’ve made. If your goal is to never stop growing, expanding, getting ‘more’ of whatever it is, you’ll never feel successful. If your growth begins to slow, stagnate, or even recede, you won’t just feel unsuccessful — you might start to feel inadequate.

Moving target definitions of success have you running on a mouse-wheel. You’re constantly moving, but you never so much as edge closer to an end point — a place where you can say, I’ve done everything I wanted to do, and what comes after is just a bonus.

What drove you to do it?

There is a reason you bought that domain name, that hosting plan, and fumbled with a layout. Maybe you wanted to write for the sake of writing. Maybe you wanted a thousand visitors a day, or to make money online. Maybe you weren’t sure what you wanted. Maybe you have a better idea of it now than you did then.

Goals are only useful when they’re concrete. You can reach them, celebrate them, then set yourself another. The process should always have a definite end: a place where you can turn around and say: “That’s enough. I’ve got what I wanted.” Perhaps you can then extend your goals in another direction, and challenge yourself in a different way.

If your goal is to get 5,000 unique visitors a day, and you reach it, where will you go next? 10,000? 25,000? 50,000? Setting unlimited plateaus can be as fruitless as moving target goals. You’re climbing a mountain that grows taller by a step for each step forward that you take.

The challenge is to set a fixed goal for your site — a peak for the mountain, perhaps. A point where there is nothing to do but follow a new direction, and redefine your goals away from exponential growth. Tie it up with what drove you to start your site in the first place. If your goal was to get into the Technorati 100, at what number would you say you had achieved that goal? 99? 50? 25? 1?

Set a fixed point, and build plateaus as steps to get there. You can celebrate each one along the way. Once you reach your end goal, though, the next step is not to add another plateau on top of that. It’s no better than a moving target.

Instead, change direction, find a new end goal with a new set of plateaus.

If you attach success to a concrete target you have a real chance of achieving it. Not just a taste of it, as you do each time you reach a plateau, but complete success. Re-orienting your goals in new directions, towards new definitions of success, will ensure that your site allows you to experience it — fully, and completely — in many different ways.

A question to ask yourself, and you’re welcome to share the answer: Have you been defining success as a moving target?