When we began producing family reports in 2014, we took the approach of defining our family values and creating goals and habits in line with those values.
We have found immense value in continually seeking to align our actions to our values.
We have struggled to justify the pursuit of specific, long-term, measurable goals as part of this process.
For example, our values state that we value education (reading, thinking, writing, discussion, lecture, production, travel, etc. in pursuit of a growing ability to reason and express ourselves well). However, we would struggle to argue that our children absolutely must go to Wharton, or any other top-tier school. While this is possible and we have plans to support it, we reject any dogma that would insist on this as an outcome. It is possible we will conclude that sending our children into rural China and funding them as venture capitalists would provide a better education, and if we reach this conclusion we will do so. The target outcome is the best education possible, not a specific expression of that (e.g., a Wharton degree).
Patrick O’Shaughnessy states this approach well in his Growth Without Goals philosophy. A few excerpts:
Continuous, habitual practice(s) trumps achievement-based success. Now I just want to explore….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, but those things are just byproducts. The key isn’t thinking long-term, which implies long-term goals. Long-term thinking is really just goalless thinking. Long-term “success” probably just comes from an emphasis on process and mindset in the present. Long-term thinking is also made possible by denying its opposite: short-term thinking.
We have encountered frustration and futility when we have sought to define and pursue specific, long-term measurable objectives beyond reasonable health, wellness, education and support for our family. Beyond the inability to adequately justify such goals, we have found them psychologically challenging as they create a regular sense of failure – one is in a constant state of failure until they have achieved success — and then just until the next goal is defined. Such goals also needlessly narrow the range of potential outcomes in the adventure of life. If we focus on the journey — not the outcomes — then we should be open to many paths.
Some research suggests that greatness in large matters requires a lack of goals. The point is simple: achievement of greatness is an an opaque and often deceptive path. This is somewhat obvious: if greatness could be taught, the teaching institution would cost a (literal) fortune. Our ends are not directly controllable. Rather, we can and should focus on our means — how we operate — and be willing to aggressively evolve with our circumstances.
For these reasons one will see in our family philosophies a focus on how we want to live, and a constant pursuit to live with the intent defined in our values. One will find little in the way of specific goals or end points.
Last updated: 2022 (v2)
Prior versions: 2018 (v1)