This list has several purposes:
- For someone with some completed goals who is looking to move forward to new horizons; help you consider which common goal-pursuits you have not explored and if you want to try to strive for something in one of these directions.
- For someone without clear goals who is looking to create them and does not know where to start.
- For someone with too many specific goals who is looking to consider the essences of those goals and what they are really striving for.
- For someone who doesn't really understand goals or why we go after them to get a better feel for "what" potential goals could be.
What to do with this list?
- Go through this list (copy paste to your own document) and cross out the things you probably don't care about. Some of these have overlapping solutions of projects that you can do that fulfils multiple goal-space concepts. (5mins)
- For the remaining goals; rank them either "1 to n", in "tiers" of high to low priority or generally order them in some way that is coherent to you. (For serious quantification; consider giving them points - i.e. 100 points for achieving a self-awareness and understanding goal but a pleasure/creativity goal might be only worth 20 points in comparison) (10mins)
- Make a list of your ongoing projects (5-10mins), and check if they actually match up to your most preferable goals. (or your number ranking) (5-10mins) If not; make sure you have a really really good excuse for yourself.
- Consider how you might like to do things differently that prioritise your current plans to fit more inline with your goals. (10-20mins)
- Repeat this task at an appropriate interval (6monthly, monthly, when your goals significantly change, when your life significantly changes, when major projects end)
First off, I wanted to say that I like your post and the general idea of it, but I feel that in its current form it is lacking a base. That is, it's not grounded in anything. When I look at each of your points, I don't get any understanding of why these goals would actually be rational and worthwhile pursuing, I feel like you sort of have to approach your list with goals already in mind. Maybe, this is just about different ways that we would approach the same issue, but if I was creating a similar list I would first look at what the fundamental human needs are. If you know what these are and you also know what causes people to flourish, then you can develop your goals around that. This would probably give you very similar goals, but it would also let you know why and when the goals are worth pursuing. It would also let you know which goals are currently worth spending the most amount of resources and effort pursuing as you can look at how much you are meeting each of the fundamental human needs. Then you can find gaps and choose appropriate goals that will fill those gaps.
I found the below resources to be useful when I briefly looked into the fundamental human needs.
The below table of virtues (basically what makes a good person), see above link for more details, is probably a good starting point for something to base your goals on
Here are some more goals that I could think of
Here are some of your goals that I don't really understand why they are worth pursuing
Maybe, if you have a different persona or personality than I do then you would find these worth pursuing, but I don't. I'm not sure they are rational things to be pursuing either. These seem like things that come after you become awesome at something and you can only become awesome at something if you love doing it. You simply wont be able to love it if you are only doing it for some ulterior motive like wanting fame. Now, I understand why you would leadership if you feel like you are in a certain position where you believe you can do more good than the current people in charge or if there is a gap that needs to be filled, but it doesn't seem worth pursuing power just for powers sake.
Yes this list has no base, but its less-bad than not having goals or a map of common goal-space and not knowing where to look for inspiration in the area.
Power was a late addition to the list; while I can agree that power is unusual; it may be /a/ goal of /a/ person (to obtain power for power's sake).
Similarly finding a way to leave a legacy behind, i.e. setting up a sustainable foundation to shape the future of humanity (i.e. nobel prizes). and leave yourself with a legacy (without of which Alfred nobel would be known only for the invention of TNT - whi... (read more)