{"id":476,"date":"2006-04-03T08:30:32","date_gmt":"2006-04-03T13:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/2006\/04\/03\/goals-in-life\/"},"modified":"2006-04-03T08:34:08","modified_gmt":"2006-04-03T13:34:08","slug":"goals-in-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/2006\/04\/03\/goals-in-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Goals in life"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was talking to my friend Wes over the weekend, and he mentioned a talk he’d seen by Charlie Munger<\/a>, right hand man of Warren Buffett. Munger apparently has a background in economics and law, and mentioned in his talk about how he had benefitted repeatedly from having a broader background than most in his position. He said that it was valuable to have a variety of different perspectives such that one could choose among them to find the most useful one to use for a given problem.<\/p>\n

Wes brought this up because we were talking about the ups and downs of being a generalist<\/a> in this ever more specialized world. Munger was suggesting that collecting more perspectives is always a good thing – it’s like expanding one’s toolbox. With only one perspective, one is like the proverbial hammer owner, to whom every problem seems like a nail. With a variety of perspectives, one can pick and choose. So we kicked around the idea that maybe one possible goal in life is to collect a variety of perspectives.<\/p>\n

But that’s not the only possible goal in life, of course. A while ago, I’d speculated that the goal in life was to collect as many interesting stories as possible. Stories are what bind people together<\/a>, so having more stories means more ways to connect. And who doesn’t like hanging out with people who have interesting stories to tell?<\/p>\n

Another possible goal is to have as many interesting experiences as possible. This is closely related to stories; after all, having interesting experiences often means being able to tell interesting stories to tell afterwards. I do try to keep my mind open and try new things: I’ve been bungee jumping<\/a> and sky diving<\/a>, I’ve been to Burning Man, I’ve sung at Carnegie Hall<\/a>, been in an Emmy award winning production of Sweeney Todd<\/a>, I’ve lived for a year in Europe on the Swiss-French border. But I’m not as good at this goal as I’d like to be – I don’t seek out new experiences as much as I could. So that’s something for me to consider – a friend is trying to talk me into trying a kundalini yoga class, which I might give a shot, just for the experience.<\/p>\n

While I was sitting at my housewarming party last weekend and marvelling that I had gotten ten people to show up less than a month after moving to New York, I realized that another thing I like to do is collect interesting people. I really enjoy finding smart articulate people who challenge me to think. So that’s another possible goal in life. I always liked Bujold’s description of Miles Vorkosigan in A Civil Campaign<\/i>: “Miles seemed to collect friends of wit and distinction and extraordinary ability around himself as casually and unselfconsciously as a comet trailed its banner of light.” That’s a state to which I aspire.<\/p>\n

I’ve listed several possible different goals in life at this point: collecting different perspectives, stories, experiences, and people. Fortunately, they’re not exclusive by any means. Spending time with a variety of interesting people means learning about their various perspectives. Doing things with interesting people often leads to interesting experiences which lead to interesting stories. It all fits together.<\/p>\n

I’ve been thinking a lot about my life recently and what I want to get out of it. I’m starting to realize I am no longer as young as I once was, with my whole life ahead of me; at my new company, I’m an old geezer compared to most of my coworkers. And yet there’s still so many things I want to do. Alas, my time and energy are limited so it becomes a matter of prioritization. Putting together this list of possible goals helps me to think about how to evaluate possible opportunities – will it introduce me to new people, perspectives, or experiences? Not a particularly standard set of metrics compared to fame and wealth, but I think it will be more satisfying. I’ve tried the materialistic life, and it just doesn’t do much for me; heck, my little sports car up and died<\/a> as a physical manifestation that it was not the way I should be living my life :). Time for me to consider some alternative perspectives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was talking to my friend Wes over the weekend, and he mentioned a talk he’d seen by Charlie Munger, right hand man of Warren Buffett. Munger apparently has a background in economics and law, and mentioned in his talk about how he had benefitted repeatedly from having a broader background than most in his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","category-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}