Clarify the things you don’t want to happen, so you can better avoid them.
About
Charlie Munger has a famous saying: “Tell me where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.” We often think about what we want, but sometimes it’s more helpful to think about what you don’t like or the person you don’t want to be a year from now. It’s easier to know what you want to avoid than to exactly know what you want. Anti-goals help you clarify what misery is for you, so you can become more conscious of not ending up in despair. When you don’t focus on the dream but try to avoid hell, you end up doing pretty well. Things to keep in mind: • Anti-goals should work along with your goals to keep you accountable. • Anti-goals evolve in time together with you and your goals. • Anti-goals should motivate you to move forward by making the hell visible.
Examples
Andrew Wilkinson, the founder of Tiny, told a story about when he sat down with his business partner and thought about what they wanted to achieve with their business. They came up with all sorts of lofty goals but found out that the true objective was pretty simple. They wanted to actually enjoy their time at work, something which many successful business people struggle with. You can have an awesome life on the outside, but it’s meaningless when inside, you feel like crap all the time. The days can slowly start to fill up with things you don’t want to do. You feel the need to beat the calendar, do business with people you don’t like, or find out that you only get 4 hours of sleep every night. Think about what misery would look like in your business, career, relationships, and health, and then avoid that.
1. What would your worst possible day look like?
Instead of thinking about what you want your perfect day to look like, come up with the worst day imaginable.
Key areas to think about: • Values: What standards or behaviours do you not want to embody? • Habit: What actions do you want to make sure you consciously avoid? • Physical: At 40 what physical health issues do you want to avoid? • Emotional: Are there any states of mind that you want to avoid? • Relationships: What relationships do you want to avoid?
2. What are your anti-goals?
Work backward from your worst day, and create a set of anti-goals.
Worst possible day: 1. Full of long meetings 2. Dealing with people you don’t like or trust 3. Feel tired 4. Having to be at the office Anti goals: 1. Never schedule an in-person meeting when it can otherwise be accomplished via email or phone (or not at all) 2. No business or obligations with people you don’t like – even just a slight bad vibe, and it’s a hard no 3. Never schedule morning meetings, sleep is needed 4. Work from a cafe across from a beautiful park where you can come and go as you please with nobody bothering you
Add questions to editor