Why All Your Goals Should Point to One Thing
Welcome back to The Creative Life. I’m Jim Kroft.
If you’re starting 2026 with a dozen open tabs and a pile of half-finished projects, you don’t need more goals—you need a way to finish what you’ve already started. Most of us falter not because we lack talent, but because we’re being hollowed out by distraction. This episode is about why all your goals for this year should point to just one thing.
For those of you new to the show, I’ve been through the ups and downs of a major label deal as a musician, the challenge of restarting as a filmmaker, releasing eventually six documentaries around the world and working with clients from The Washington Post to Google. I know both the struggle of the underground and the momentum of working with bigger companies—but if there’s one thing I know, it's the weight of an "Albatross Project"—that project you just can’t ever seem to finish—and how it can live with you for years, haunting you in the shadows.
But the good news is we’re here to talk through how we can become completers: the routines, the rituals, and the tactics.
Today is for the artists, writers, and creators who are ready to stop the side quests and finally close the loop. We’re breaking down:
The Power of No: Why focus is about doing fewer things, not more.
The Binary Filter: Using a "Hierarchy of Choice" to end the daily negotiation with yourself.
Hardest First: Turning resistance into a ritual by tackling your toughest task every single day.
There is a specific kind of dignity that only comes from a finished arc. It’s time to stop the multiplication and start the completion.
Let’s get into it.
Why All Your Goals Should Point to One Thing
A 2026 blueprint for finishing what you already started.
I’ve released six albums and six feature documentaries. I know what it means to carry a project across years to completion—and the desperate pain when life cauterises something brought painfully close to the finish. These hang over you like albatrosses: Albatross Projects.
I often feel the weight of those unfinished works more than the pride of what I’ve completed; as if part of my legacy was extinguished. But you get to adjust your course. You get to go again. Last year, I harvested the lessons of my successes and failures to build a blueprint for 2026. I’m sharing it because while millions are writing vague goals, I want to help you concretise yours in the real world.
The gulf between a dream and its reality is filled with the goals you set. But here is the catch: many goals are distractions in disguise. They pull you in too many directions at once. This is the filter I’m using to ensure the arc actually completes—and how you can apply it to your own.
1. Why One Thing? Everyone is obsessed with “building an audience.” It is no longer cringe to build a brand or a side-hustle; it is de rigueur. The problem is that people confuse building the audience with the thing itself. The paradox is that to build an audience, you must first be known for doing something.
If you haven’t achieved it yet, the process of building it can become the thing you are known for. The online universe is a perfect delivery system for this; people take great joy in watching things grow. But too many let “growing a Substack” or a YouTube become the central aim. Though you can grow through consistency, 99% of people hit a bottleneck. There are too many people competing for too little space to grow by simply “showing up.”
That’s why you should work on a bigger project. Beyond the fact that it calls you—it separates you. It gives you something challenging. Something aspirational. Something that has fucking jeopardy. If you pursue that call, it spirals your life upwards. If you want to develop your online life, find something you want to create in the real world and follow it to completion. That, alone, will set you apart.
2. Identify the Non-Negotiable I started writing my current album on January 1st, 2024. That is an age ago in a content-driven world where what we did an hour ago is already forgotten. Too many of us mistake working on one thing for "too long" as the risk of being left behind. Yet to make anything of significance you have to enter that space: the forgotten.
My own album is called “Chromatic Zero” because the act of writing an album is predicated on entering this limbo. Daring to. Writing it was a cry against the content tsunami—risking the silence of stopping to become something new, rather than replicating the same version of myself just to keep up.
At one point, the album became so heavy I thought life was asking me to let it go. But I realised that is exactly the point so many projects fragment, fail, fall apart. As Robert Frost put it, the way out is through. To do that I had to make many changes—leading to this core resolution: 2026 is about stopping the multiplication. It is a year where every habit, every hour, and every “no” points toward one thing.
Focus isn’t the ability to focus on some thing; it is the ability to focus on fewer things. Want to move your life forward in 2026? Find what is non-negotiable to you.
3. Completion Over Expansion I have identified one core project: the album. But a work of art does not complete itself once it is made; that is when Phase Two begins. Phase One is making the thing. Phase Two is releasing it and carrying it into the world. Most projects die in the gap between the two.
For me, making something is not the hard part. The difficulty is promotion. Yet the world calls, and part of our challenge is to answer. Any project is tied to things we don’t want to do. Since we often lack manpower, money, and skill, the only way to compensate is with energy, effort, and time. Yes, brute force effort.
We choose distraction not because we can’t focus, but because it offers relief from the emotional weight of completing. Cutting off parts of yourself to do stuff you don’t want to do feels painful—which is why you see so many creatives flocking to those promoting multi-hyphenism. But it’s just seeking sanctuary from challenging your default state.
4. The Hierarchy of Choice I have created a hierarchy of choice to protect my one key outcome. If it doesn’t serve the project, it’s a “No.” In a distracted world, a binary filter is a superpower.
The Album Cycle = Vinyl → Release → Tour Every activity is now primary, secondary, or discarded.
Primary activities: Artwork, Tour booking, Practice.
Secondary activities: Content creation, Exercise, Nutrition, Quitting alcohol.
Discipline creates the freedom. Not the other way around. When a new opportunity calls in 2026, I’ll have three questions:
Does this serve the album cycle?
Does this help me finish?
Does this support my weekly rhythm? If the answer is “no,” the response is “no.”
5. The Decisions That Changed the Trajectory Completion requires infrastructure, and the unit upon which that is built is the week. I prefer to think about rituals. A ritual extends from the Self—what you want to do and why. My confidence for the year ahead comes from removing "daily negotiation." I decided:
To quit alcohol (5 months in!)
To practice every morning for an hour (usually piano)
To do something practical for the project every day
Transformation is not sexy. It starts with staring at your own bedraggled eyes in the mirror and asking: Are you going to fulfill your potential or not?
6. How I am Ritualising My Week in 2026 I aim for three core daily inputs:
Improving: Doing what I find hardest first. For me, that is the piano. Commit for a year and take the “if” out.
Project Management: Nudging the work forward. Doing one small thing daily and asking for help.
Content Flywheel: Content comes downstream from improving. Improving + Documentation = High-Value Content.
Conclusion: The Dignity of the Finished Arc We are living through a crisis of the “In-Between.” To complete a work, you have to go through it. And going through is painful. The reason projects fail isn’t because we don’t have the tools inside us. It’s because we can’t take the friction that comes with going through the tough things.
Courage is a contrary choice. It is redirecting your own river. Entering the limbo. Cutting the heads off the hydra. 2026 doesn’t have to be the year you do more. You will only significantly affect your life by doing one thing, doing it better, and getting it out.
Creation is about expressing the totality of yourself through a single fragment. That fragment is a choice—a symbol of who you are. If you want it to be all things, it will be nothing.
It is a painful choice, but it frees you. This is your life. Your year. What are you going to do with it?
