Most of our attempts to become better people, fitter and healthier, more moral/ productive/ organised, and so forth, make this problem worse– because it's basically impossible to pursue any program of personal change without the thought, somewhere in the back of your mind, that successfully completing the change will catapult you into a new and

Focus on what you’ve already completed, not just on what’s left to complete. Since the quest to get everything done is interminable by definition (here), it’s easy to grow despondent and self-reproachful: you can’t feel good about yourself until it’s all finished—but it’s never finished, so you never get to feel good about yourself.