Back in 2014, I set some new Career Goals. I was tired of the usual metrics and searching for something better. Here’s what I came up with back then:
I want to spend my summers, from June 1 through September 1, at Bethany Beach with my family.
That’s a pretty great goal. I wrote it, mostly forgot about it, and kept on moving forward. A couple months ago, I stumbled on it again in the deep recesses of my blog (this is one of the reasons it pays to write down what you’re thinking about by the way, so you can see revisit it and see what you were thinking about). I had given myself ten years to make this goal real and here I am, ten years later, with a beach house that my family and I spend a lot of the summer in. That goal turned out surprisingly well.
Not only because it became a reality, but also because it became a reality mostly unconsciously. By working it out, defining it, and then getting back to work, it sort of just.. happened. That’s glossing over a hell of a lot of detail obviously. But what fascinates me about goals is their subtle power - they guide like the north star without overwhelming the night sky.This goal was just something we were working towards as a family but we didn’t talk or think about it every day. We went about the business of living and oriented our life towards the idea and had a little luck and effort and allowed our life to carry us to that point.
And it was the right goal by the way, far better than any positional or salary-driven goal. It was oriented towards freedom and family.
Now we’re here. Ten years on. We did it!
What’s next?
I’m now 44. My oldest child is one year away from high school. My kids are no longer babies, but they’re not grown either. I’ve been privileged to be a part of working on and building some very special things. But as much as I’ve done some good things I feel like there are still so many that are undone.
What’s next?
Here’s an answer.
I want to pursue transformative changes in the world aligned with fundamental virtues and stake the dreams of others with shared principles to achieve their visions.
This is intentionally more open-ended than the first ten year goal. That’s by design, because I probably don’t know what some of these changes will be. I have ideas obviously, but at different stages of exploration. They do have some common attributes though. They all help reshape the world in ways that are fundamentally aligned with the classical virtues of truth, wisdom, justice, and beauty. They will also mean ownership, in whole or in part, of new ventures. And, done right, this will be a growing portfolio of investments.
Look here: they say money can be a tool or a measuring stick. The best thing about my goal from ten years ago was not the specifics, but that it forced me to stop thinking about money and career in terms of measuring sticks and to start thinking about tools. What did I want to use money for? What was the goal of working? Of wealth generation?
I’ve struggled to find a one sentence vision of what I want the next ten years to hold. What I’ve got sounds more.. consequential and high-falutin’. But the point is to focus more on others and not on lifestyle or wealth. I’ve learned that there’s a limit to the amount of money one can spend on their lifestyle. As Sergey Brin once said, “nobody can spend a billion dollars in a lifetime.” I am nowhere near the upper limit of a “rich” life, but any lifestyle inflation that comes from here on out is really a side quest rather than the main plot.
The other really great thing about “money as a tool” is that it forces you to optimize for freedom. This isn’t immediately obvious but, as a tool, money becomes a means to an end. What end? That’s up to you. The ends are inherently driven by your vision and your dreams.
This is remarkably terrifying. It forces you to put your vision and dreams on trial. Are they real? Imagined? Totally contrived? Impossible to build? Are you satisfied with them remaining dreams or must you force them to become a reality?
Some visions want to become a reality. And this is the the real utility of money - why it is such a powerful tool - that you can put it to work to change things in the world. But each unit of change often takes quite a lot of dollars to make things happen! When you build a company to change an industry it requires millions along the way. Funding a charity takes a lot too. Even seed investments are usually hundreds of thousands these days. To actually effectuate any of these ideas, these transformations, will take a lot of money. More personal wealth is needed not for lifestyle inflation or because the Joneses demand it, but because it’s needed to get units of change done.
When I look back ten years from now, I hope there are a series of decisions and risks taken to make change. And I hope they’re not just for me. This remains one of my favorite Tyler Cowen quotes, and I revisit it often:
“At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. It costs you relatively little to do this, but the benefit to them, and to the broader world, may be enormous. This is in fact one of the most valuable things you can do with your time and with your life.”
There’s a bigger version of this too, wherein you help stake the dreams of others and bet on them financially. The ambitions and abilities of intelligent and high agency people from 18-25 is still often squandered on too many credentials and too little building.
At the level of lifestyle, this goal retains the other key characteristics that made the first ten year goal so good. It will demand flexibility (though probably in new ways), success, personal discipline, and family discipline. It will also demand new levels of risk taking, fortitude, and willingness to connect to people in a way that is not always comfortable.
I’m excited to forget completely about writing this over the next couple of months and even more excited to revisit it when I’m 54 to see where things stand.
Skin in the game. Let’s go.