You don't need a goal, you need a theme:
"With a theme, happiness becomes more about how you behave rather than what you achieve. Life is not a series of wins and losses. Though our highs and lows may shock us, lift us up, and forever shape our memories, they do not define us. Most of life happens in the in-between,... See more
When you break a bone, you don’t blame it on the leg or the arm. It is a problem of the entire body. What if we acted that way in society? Instead of blaming groups for violence or terrorism, we see it as a problem for all of society, something we all have a responsibility to solve.
Intellectual property doesn’t make sense. What makes sense is to stop trying to limit ideas about ideas. What makes sense is for all intangible creations of the human intellect to be free.
To paraphrase Buffett and Munger – decision-making is not about making brilliant decisions, but avoiding terrible ones. Mistakes and dumb decisions are a fact of life and I’m going to make more, but as long as I can avoid the big or “fatal” ones I’m fine.
That's what leads people to try to write novels, for example. They like reading novels. They notice that people who write them win Nobel prizes. What could be more wonderful, they think, than to be a novelist? But liking the idea of being a novelist is not enough; you have to like the actual work of novel-writing if you're going to be good at it;... See more
Four steps: choose a field, learn enough to get to the frontier, notice gaps, explore promising ones. This is how practically everyone who's done great work has done it, from painters to physicists.