Le Baron wrote:What's the difference between that and just reading a chapter per day? Or e.g. 'some pages'. That's a micro-goal too, part of a book. It's the oddly specific counting that baffles me. Like some guy who says 'I'm going to get fit by jogging...I'll take 209 steps a day'. Why not just 200?
Maybe it depends on your Significant Other
There was a time when I had the goal of 10,000 steps per day. What that did was sometimes when I was under 10,000, I'd do some extra walking to hit the goal. It may not mean a lot, but say you weren't counting and you were only doing 1000-2000 steps per day on average. (That's probably were I was at in my normal sedentary lifestyle at the time). The 10,000 step goal suddenly increases your movement a lot. That happened to be at a time when I was trying to improve my fitness significantly. Other numbers like "heart rate", "duration", "weight lifted", "reps" all were helpful in knowing I'm working hard and I'm doing more than I used to be able to and I could see progress, even when it seemed like I was stuck. Sometimes I was stuck, and that meant it was time to "change up" the workout.
Metrics can sometimes help carry you through the doldrums when it's not obvious you're making progress.
These days, I just take 2 walks per day and count it as 7500 steps. It's probably a lot more, but 7500 is the goal my boss is looking for, and I'm sure I'm exceeding it and that's all that matters. (not the exact number or whether it's 8,000 or 18,000).
You're at a more advanced stage. You know the difference between quality and quantity, even though quality is harder to measure. At earlier stages, we sometimes have to use quantity. In the process, we may begin to develop a feel for "quality".