The Real Question Behind 'What Do You Want?'
lopespm.com
lopespm.com
Given that lengthy lists are unachievable, they need to be slimmed down to a manageable and realistic size.
I was reading Ted Turner’s biography yesterday and this advice by his father stood out to me:
[Turner’s father] was having a really tough time reevaluating things and coming up with a plan for the rest of his life. He then told me something I've never forgotten. He said, "Son, you be sure to set your goals so high that you can't possibly accomplish them in one lifetime. That way you'll always have something ahead of you. I made the mistake of setting my goals too low and now I'm having a hard time coming up with new ones.”
His father ended up dying early and right in the midst of trying to sell his company out of fear, which the son Ted Turner wanted to run.
I think his father was basically right in that you shouldn’t set limits on your goals, as you just might achieve them all and not know what to do with yourself. Getting stuck in a local maximum is a very real risk for most people.
It’s better to adopt a mindset that accepts the fact that you won’t quite get everything you want, but what you do get will be vastly more than if you had just settled and “sacrificed for”, to use the author’s term. It’s more of a process-oriented outlook than a goal-achievement one.
Couldn't do last week Tour du Mont Blanc bivouacking due to mild Morton's neuroma developing in my foot few weekends ago, so moving it to sometime next year. Even though I trained for it for past 6 months, the goal is not going away, just postponed (2nd time, first time broke 3 bones in my foot, I am no stranger to similar disappointments). Working on other goals in the meantime, adding/removing them continuously (finish getting motorbike license, progressing on paragliding, improving my french, kids & family etc).
Also, being parent and raising kids, there is endless stream of goals for solid 2 decades (and then some more) if you want to tell yourself you are a good parent and not end up with deep regrets and whys later. With a right mindset, you see goals everywhere just waiting for your interest, and end up realizing life is damn too short.
Still, I seem/appear to have an untamable drive to do things that seem to spur from the creative side of my brain. It seems to be an incessant stream of thoughts, that I want to explore by mostly creating, fixing or optimizing.
I see that in my (in-law) family, most people are a lot less like that. As an example, if something is broken, the first reaction is a tendency for replacing it or having someone else fix it. If they want something, they buy; it doesn't come in their mind to create or derive it. If they don't have the money, they complain.
For some reason I am less like that, and I am really amazed by how some people try the easy way out by default, while fixing or creating seems to be so much more fulfilling.
I notice I am drifting, the Tldr is, a big 'plan for life' is not needed if you have some creativity and are open to looking around and finding opportunities for small fulfilling goals.
Framing it this way poisons everything downstream of it.
It's unfortunate if the author believes "that" is the "real question", but they have plenty of company in self-induced psychological damage of this variety, and thanks to the wonders of modern technology can amplify that damage and share its wonders with billions of people.
On my side I believe the more you sacrifice the less you enjoy your goal. I sacrificed a LOT, I reached my goals and more, nothing have taste anymore.
0) "What do you want" is the question. There isn't a deeper question behind it. Pretending that there is a deeper question is just one of the self-sabotaging ways we avoid answering the question.
1) Investments aren't sacrifices. If you want to, say, lose 50 pounds because of Your Reasons, then you are investing your attention and your non-renewable time in accomplishing what you want by eating/doing things that make that outcome more probable. You are not "sacrificing" chocolate cake and icecream and whatever.
2) You sacrifice things that you actually have/do and which are valuable to you. Since you can't have or do everything, and since things that take you away from what you actually want are not valuable to you, then you aren't "sacrificing" anything when you "give up" things that you couldn't actually have or do, or things that aren't actually valuable.
Everything is a choice. Choices involve tradeoffs. That is a fine, rational way to view it if you must view it in some way. Framing it as "sacrifices" dramatically increases the likelihood of failure, poisons your own emotional relationship to the process, and sours your feelings toward the goal itself.
In some people it also tends to promote a false narrative that "sacrifices are necessary", but that's heading away from my own goal in commenting. So. :)
My reality is that all wants are illusions. So to me it’s all a game. You can’t sacrifice anything ad those other wants and desires were never real in the first place.
Take time to be kind to others, go for a walk and then make some tea. Sit quietly at a table and avoid writing sanctimonious blog posts on productivity. ;-)
the last time i can remember that i wanted something was when i was a little kid and i wanted a toy radio, my mum bought it for me and later got "problems" at home because of that as we were poor and it was "expensive", after that i felt bad for wanting it
that was the last time i can remember i ever wanted anything
similar for goals - when i was a teenager i set an ambitious goal for myself to get a prestigious industry certification before finishing high-school, i thought that it will make me happy, but the moment i achieved it - i felt exactly nothing, that was the last time i set a goal for myself
not sure i am weird - but the question "what do you want" sounds silly to me, why would you want anything at all? it wont bring you happiness when you have the biggest truck or house on the street, or when you sell your company for a lot of money or when you get a professorship or whatever other goal you might set for yourself, ask yourself do you really feel joy and happiness when you get there / achieve it?
do what is right every time a situation calls for it, never take the "easy path" - this way you will never have any regrets, because you simply couldn't do more / better
reading this you might conclude then - ok that sounds like a pretty sad life - so let me add that instead of wanting things, where i found joy and happiness is in doing "good deeds" - try helping someone, make them smile, make their day better and see how will that make you feel, similarly in my professional life - i decided to focus only on what i enjoy and that is solving problems, the harder the challenge the better it makes me feel - the thrill that we are onto something and once one challenge is done i move to another and i feel again alive - that i have a purpose and couldn't possibly be more helpful / create more "good" in any other way
It's not weird to not want to purchase things, it's actually pretty liberating, but it's extremely unlikely that you do not have any "wants" as in things you'd like to do or achieve.
Not sure if I interpreted your comment correctly, to me it really sounded very narrowly focused on wanting "things" (as in physical products) which I don't think is the point.
exactly as you say, you either want something physical aka want a thing, or you want to accomplish something aka a goal - be better at sport etc, that's a goal - i tried to reflect on both of these alternatives in my original comment, just to expand on that example - you don't need goals to enjoy sport, like i do a lot of running but i don't do competitive running as i don't feel the need to measure myself against others to enjoy running
in fact that's a very good point - thank you for that - i feel having goals is just a "mental trick" to push yourself in some direction, to try to create some "structure" in the unstructured world we live in, one could say a desperate try to "map" the way forward via creating some steps you can follow to happiness... aka i do this then i will be happy, i achieve this, i become better at sport, i run a marathon under X etc, and i will be happy... when i put it like this, doesn't it start to sound silly as a concept? that was the only point i tried to make
This is still too narrowed down, you can just "want to run a marathon", not with a specific time in mind, you just feel like you want to try that. It's quite impossible you only stumble upon doing things without having a want, all of your examples can be a much simpler want: "I want to run", whatever the motivation "I think it'll make me happy", "I feel it might improve my physical fitness", "I just want to try". Those are all wants, not goal-oriented, you simply want to do things.
I can't see how someone can live without wants, even just doing things the way you like to approach them and described here:
> where i found joy and happiness is in doing "good deeds" - try helping someone, make them smile, make their day better and see how will that make you feel, similarly in my professional life - i decided to focus only on what i enjoy and that is solving problems, the harder the challenge the better it makes me feel - the thrill that we are onto something and once one challenge is done i move to another and i feel again alive - that i have a purpose and couldn't possibly be more helpful / create more "good" in any other way
Are wants. You want to do good deeds, you want to solve problems, you live by wants.
It’s a first principle guide, like the North Star or a stable feature on the horizon when you are hiking a substantial distance.
Of course I have to walk that first principle back, but I feel like super long term thinking is a pretty good guide.
Pretending I have infinite time, but want everything as soon as I can get it, motivates me to attack the most difficult problems I can, that would make the most difference.
These tend to be problems whose solutions help other people too.
We are only 13.8 billion years old! There are only 8 billion of us. So much future space and time, with so much to learn and do!
[0] https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Morden#What_Do_You_Want%3F
EDIT: Fixed the URL encoding of the question mark
TL; DR if I get it right: "What do you want" means "What are you willing to sacrifice?". Is this meant to be deep?
On the topic of HN guidelines: Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.
Interesting that what the Christian God wants most is his divine Son.
> … it is easy to make lists of everything one wants …
> The real question behind defining [sic?] knowing what we want is actually what we are willing to sacrifice.
“Want” gets redefined somewhere between the first and second to last paragraph. Sacrifice isn’t actually inherent to the want list.
I imagine part of power of this technique is that you’re leading yourself to believe that you don’t want the things off the list. Maybe if you’re convincing enough you actually don’t? I’d be interested in what the author would think about the things on the first list and off the final draft. Do they still want them?
I don’t know. In writing this out, it may be less dissonance and more conversion. I think I’d like to try this out. For myself, I just want to be sure I don’t act like I never wanted those things in the first place. More like saying goodbye to them.
Or maybe it’s like team tryouts? You can want 100 players on your team. But there are also the 25 players you really want, that get their name on the short list.
I think I get what the author is going for. English lacks words to describe the degree to which you want something paired with how seriously you're willing to pursue it. A word that means "I desire this enough to seriously work for it given the sacrifices required" would be really useful and I've found quite a few people pull the same semantic trick with want that the author does as a way to communicate it.
Certainly, trying to push this idea into my mentees' minds is something I've had to spend an unfortunately large amount of time doing given how intuitive it feels like it should be.
I cannot put them on two axis here, but there's plenty of words with embedded the pull and the seriousness of the want.
> What are you willing to sacrifice?
Context is goal-setting.
Just because you have to choose between things you can possibly have, does not mean you are sacrificing the thing you don't choose. You can't sacrifice something you don't have. And I guess its a nitpick on one's definition of sacrifice, so just saying that this is my subjective opinion.
A way I like to put it is: everything has pros and cons, and you have to decide what cons you are willing to put up with, given that the pros are close enough.
You sacrifice your desire for it. Since you can not have everything you want, you need to decide what trade-offs are acceptable to you. It is essentialy the same as what you said: You have to decide what cons you are willing to put up with.
I think the author's framing is correct, because the alternative is wanting everything/perfection, which is impossible.
This inadvertently made me realise that I am one of those people who will 100% start with the low priority goal because, in this framing, it's likely to be easier and more achievable.
Which is totally not the point. Thank you, Pedro, for the possibly life-changing behaviour nudge.
It's far more actionable (and therefore higher value) to know what is NOT high priority than it is to know how exactly one's highest priorities rank relative to one another.
But this is a hard choice. Do you want to try and fail to be a rockstar, or become a moderately successful software engineer who will be wealthy and have a stable career. The question is what aspects of each want you actually want?