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Amara Wanjiruwriter

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Against the tyranny of goals

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Ksh 275,160

6,879 qualified × Ksh 40.00

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11,611

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Last 30 days

1,160

Qualified reads

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44%

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7

2 waiting on you

Average read

0:24

Most stop around paragraph 3 of 4

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309

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163

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Qualified reads — what you are paid onAll readsPeak 92
3,816 reads over 60 points, of which 2,271 highlighted. Busiest 2026-07-15, with 92.
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Your best-read piece of 3 — your typical one gets 8,492 reads. It reads 23% above the median across Philosophy pieces (3 published).

As submitted · 1 min read

A life organised entirely around targets may be a life that is never actually lived.

There is a particular kind of tiredness that comes not from working too hard but from being interrupted too often, and it has become the ambient condition of the age.

We speak about attention as though it were a resource we spend, which flatters us — a spender is at least in charge. The more honest metaphor is a room with a door that other people can open.

The economics of the interruption

Every notification is a small argument that something elsewhere matters more than what is in front of you. Ten thousand of those arguments, unanswered, become a disposition.

What we choose to notice is already a moral act.

The remedy is not discipline. Discipline is what you reach for when the environment is wrong and you have decided to blame yourself for it.

What readers are saying

7 comments across 4 threads·2 waiting on you·See the thread on the page

  1. Waiting on you

    Dennis Kariukiyesterday

    Third time back to this one. Still not sure I agree, still not able to put it down.

    Reply

  2. Waiting on you

    Grace Muthonia week ago

    Question — you quote the study on goal substitution but not where it comes from. Do you have the reference? I want to send it to my team without pretending I found it myself.

    Reply

  3. Kiptoo Rotich3 months ago

    Respectfully, this reads like an essay by someone who already arrived. Targets are how some of us got out of a shop in Eldoret. Hard to hear "a life organised around targets is never lived" from a byline in a magazine.

    1. Amara WanjiruWriter3 months ago

      That is a fair hit and I have been thinking about it since you posted it. What I meant to argue against is the target that outlives its reason, not the one that gets you through a door. The piece does not make that distinction clearly enough. Yours is the version I should have written.

    2. Samuel Kimani3 months ago

      This exchange is better than most of what I read this month, honestly.

    Say more

  4. Wanjiku Kamau4 months ago

    I read this on the matatu home and then again standing in my kitchen with the kettle going cold. The bit about a target being a promise you made to a person who no longer exists — that one is going to follow me around for a while.

    1. Amara WanjiruWriter3 months ago

      That line nearly got cut, so thank you for telling me it landed. It was the last thing I wrote and the first thing I doubted.

    Say more

What has happened

  1. Published · 26 Apr 2026

    Marcus Reed · Live, and earning.

  2. Approved · 24 Apr 2026

    Marcus Reed · Accepted. It goes live shortly.

  3. In review · 19 Apr 2026

    You · With an editor. You will hear back soon.

  4. Draft · 12 Apr 2026

    You · Only you can see this.