"The tangential goal trap: You can tell our relationship with learning is perverse when the main pursuit isn’t the action itself, but information about the action. This is very apparent in entrepreneurship: one pursues books, courses and content, rather than being entrepreneurial. There are many studying humanitarian aid for years, without actually aiding humanity – the main goal seems to be more knowledge about the field." (From my post: Information as a replacement for intelligence)
For most goals, there exists a related but distinctly different - and easier! - goal, trying to lure you away from the real thing. If we are not careful, we may fall into this tangential goal trap, thinking we're doing great progress on our goals. Indeed, usually it's easy to identify when you've been caught by the way you describe progress:
"I haven't written much yet but I set up my knowledge management system and signed up for a writing course."
"We don't have any paying customers yet but we're constantly adding features. And we just launched the company newsletter!"
Pursue the real goal, not some easy derivative of it!
There are many more concepts in my "Mind Expander" tool (it's free)