Well, if you understand the most important part of my post then I'm sure I can convince you on the rest of it.

You ask "Why set a short-term goal that you are most unlikely to reach?" I ask you, why set a short-term goal that you can achieve easily and without skill? Does meeting your goal of 18% ROI over a month tell you absolutely anything? It shouldn't. You could be a slightly lucky winning player, very lucky break-even player, or extremely lucky losing player. Does meeting my goal of 30% ROI over a month tell me anything? Either I'm really, really, really lucky or I'm at least doing something right. There's just a higher chance of me being a winning player if I hit 30%.

An achievable goal in the long run makes perfect sense because variance plays a much smaller role. I honestly don't make short-term goals that I expect to reach because there's no point whatsoever. A goal that has high standards in the short run can give you some meaning, although still nearly pointless.

My bad-beat run for that day was because I only played 6 tournaments that day, and if you add up those chances you'd be pretty amazed at the odds of that happening. It also shows how little short-term goals mean, and you know it too since you said it happens 'all the time'. When things like this happen all the time, what purpose is there in making a rational short-term goal? I admit that there's not much merit to my rather irrational short-term goal, but there's still more merit to it than the rational approach.