growth without Goals

from paul millerd:

In the corporate world impact was so commonly tied up with top down ideological plans and i saw over and over again that they didn’t pan out.

If someone reads my book says they like it, and found it useful cool. I receive that compliment. But trying to come up with some random abstract big number of people I want to reach? It’s re

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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

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,

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Man lives by time. Inventing the future has been his favorite game of escape. We think that changes in ourselves can come about in time, that order in ourselves can be built up little by little, added to day by day. But time doesn’t bring order or peace, so we must stop thinking in terms of gradualness. This means that there is no tomorrow for us t... See more

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

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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

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

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