growth without Goals
achieving without setting goals
alex and
growth without Goals
What does it feel like when things take shape?
There is sunlight in the office and a warm cup of coffee. There are meetings with inventors and artists. The code runs, no bugs. Wonderful music plays, I barely need to intervene, the playlist gets it right. I wrap some critical work just before our evening plans.
There is a shape to the sort of life I i... See more
There is sunlight in the office and a warm cup of coffee. There are meetings with inventors and artists. The code runs, no bugs. Wonderful music plays, I barely need to intervene, the playlist gets it right. I wrap some critical work just before our evening plans.
There is a shape to the sort of life I i... See more
polymathematics • When Things Take Shape
My guess is that Amazon’s success is a byproduct, a side-effect of a process driven, flexible, in-the-moment way of being. In the famous 1997 letter to shareholders, which lays out Amazon’s philosophy, Bezos says that their process is simple: a “relentless focus on customers.” This is not a goal to be strived for, worked towards, achieved, and the
... See morePatrick O'Shaughnessy • Growth Without Goals
Greatness Without Goals
joincolossus.comI think “accomplishments” are traps. Accomplishments, by their very definition, exist only in the past or future—which are not even real things.
Patrick O'Shaughnessy • Growth Without Goals
Now I just want to explore. That may mean blog posts, research papers, new investing strategies, letters, podcasts, long periods of nothing, or maybe another book. Who knows? Exploration is continuous, there is no end point. Focusing on exploration is very rewarding all the time. It may produce things that look like end points, like achievements,
... See morePatrick O'Shaughnessy • Growth Without Goals
It’s hard to get really depressed until your dreams come true. Once your dreams come true and you realize you feel the same way you did before then you get a feeling of hopelessness."
-Rick Rubin
The same idea applies to investing. The continuous goal, in my case, is a portfolio that has distinct advantages versus the market along dimensions like value, momentum, capital allocation, etc. There are no price targets, no return targets, no staking my results on a given outcome for a given company. A goalless process like this is incredibly ha
... See morePatrick O'Shaughnessy • Growth Without Goals
Maybe Scott Adams said it best:
To put it bluntly, goals are for losers. That’s literally true most of the time. For example, if your goal is to lose ten pounds, you will spend every moment until you reach the goal—if you reach it at all—feeling as if you were short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly con
... See morePatrick O'Shaughnessy • Growth Without Goals
I do things, I try things, I build things, I want to make progress, I want to make things better for me, my company, my family, my neighborhood, etc. But I’ve never set a goal. It’s just not how I approach things.
A goal is something that goes away when you hit it. Once you’ve reached it, it’s gone. You could always set another one, but I just don’t... See more
A goal is something that goes away when you hit it. Once you’ve reached it, it’s gone. You could always set another one, but I just don’t... See more