Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective

The trouble with planning is that it only works for achievements you can describe in advance. You can win a gold medal or get rich by deciding to as a child and then tenaciously pursuing that goal, but you can't discover natural selection that way.

I think for most people who want to do great work, the right strategy is not to plan too much. At each... See more

Yet what the book is about is that we have a tendency in our culture, a strong tendency, to basically design everything that we do around exactly that archetype, which is that let's set a goal, stay on our objective, and then let's set some metric so we can decide how close we're going to that goal, and then let's put all our effort into just movin... See more

I know this is controversial talk and antithetical to the success mantras of the metric obsessed, performative, materialistic, linear, Key Performance Indicator driven world we live in, but someone needs to play the role of the annoying child who questions lazily adhered to and potentially harmful conventions, if only to stress-test them. I mean, w... See more

The book goes on to suggest a better path to future prosperity, consisting of:

* Eudaimonia: a good life, which is meaningfully rich - with relationships, ideas, emotion, health, fulfilment, great accomplishment and enduring achievement.

* Poeisis: generating new wealth, and multiplying the Common Wealth, as opposed to net-destructive forms of compet... See more