"working without goals" means nothing. I'm sure everyone wants to get better.....so that is a goal. and make more money....another goal. and not have such a set goal that it blinds them from what is changing in the markets. ok, my goal is 1 billion by noon. or, 10,000 ES contracts by next week. oh.....so now I need "other" goals that, to you, are more reasonable. there is one simple RULE, not a goal per se........make more money then you need to live on. then you have have goals like running 100 billion next year....
Research can be utterly open-ended. You don't know if you will ever be done. You don't know that, when you get done, you will know you are done. Doing research to a schedule is just not going to work. It doesn't happen in a time realm.