7 ms·

80,000 Hours career plan worksheet

230 points by BreakoutList 10y ago

jaymzcampbell 10y ago
Before I got to the bottom of the document I wondered if this was a bigger thing I'd not heard of before, and indeed: creators of it: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/career-planning/ https://80000hours.org/career-guide/career-planning/. I quite like the idea of an "ABZ" plan. It's often far too easy to think things will just carry on as is. Thinking about these things, for me the "Z" in particular, is something I don't think people do enough until it's too late. Thanks for providing a template doc like this as a low friction way to actually start doing it.
DelaneyM 10y ago
I can't help but feel career plans, even inherently flexible ones such as the 80000 hour plan, discourage serendipity and encourage sunk-cost thinking. I'm not saying this is a bad idea, just that for the specific HackerNews demographic it may be a bit of an anti-pattern.
- cottsak 10y ago
  Yeh, I'd also like to know whether the HN demographic really has a hard time at finding work?
  - isxek 10y ago
    Some of them do.
  - shimon 10y ago
    Finding work easily doesn't mean that you'll just be automatically swept into the career you want. Some thoughtful planning is important even if it just helps you know what to say no to.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    It's not super hard to imagine. It's not like awesome jobs grow on trees, or that they're giving them away at the airport. If you're one of the few people in the world who can simply point to their ideal company, declare "I shall work there!" and then [poof] you're there, then congratulations on your good fortune. For the rest of us, finding the next rung on the ladder is an endless struggle, and there are not a lot of practical "how to" resources out there. I'm 40, have been working in technology for close to 20 years, and have had the great fortune to have stayed employed for most of those years, but for the entirety of this I've considered myself "underemployed". I've woken up each day thinking "boy I could be doing so much more if only I wasn't limited by [ ROLE | COMPANY | GEOGRAPHY | BOSS | ETC ]. Don't get me wrong--I feel grateful that tech is one of those careers where you at least have a chance to improve where you are, but these opportunities are still few, far between, and you have to pound the pavement to find them. You do need to plan and you need to ask the right questions of yourself. I like this article because it provides some structure for your plan and helps you to think about the good questions to ask yourself.
  - ryhamz 10y ago
    This is not about simply finding work. It's about finding the work you want in the long run, which is different.
  - morgante 10y ago
    Planning isn't just for people who have a hard time finding work. It's not even just for people who are unsatisfied in their work. My entire professional life I've never had trouble finding, often very fulfilling work with great compensation. But I always had a niggling feeling that I could be doing more. Planning helped me to realize that my true goal is to make an impact (even a small one) on millions of people, so now I'm taking the steps to make that happen. Also, to paraphrase Eisenhower, it's often not the plans which are most beneficial but there mere act of planning. My plans usually turn to rubbish, but the process of planning helps me to center and crystalize my thinking.
- ethbro 10y ago
  Related question, what's the opposite of sunk cost / escalation of commitment? In this context, your comment made me think about the counter point, i.e. "I'll be able to make that decision later". Is there a name for procrastination bias?
  - DelaneyM 10y ago
    "optionality bias"
- spraak 10y ago
  In my experience as one who tends towards spirituality, intuition etc over science - this type of path is jut the balance I need to keep moving towards my life's goals. I overly focus on serendipity and synchronicity to where I often don't accomplish much practical
  - nsomaru 10y ago
    Strange that you think spirituality and science are mutually exclusive.
    - spraak 10y ago
      Can you explain how you think they aren't? I think they can still be found together but generally they're at opposite ends. Also science was just one term I could think to describe that end of the spectrum
      - nsomaru 10y ago
        Sure. If you mean 'science the world view' which means the philosophical stance that Consciousness (Spirit) is an emergent property of matter (amongst other things), then yes there's a spectrum and they're opposed. On the other hand if you mean 'science the approach' — then there are many spiritual paths that follow the approach of the presentation of results and a method by which those results may be verified or refuted by a practitioner.
        spraak 10y ago
        Thanks for explaining! I appreciate the differentiation you've made between the world view and the approach, as I'd forgotten about that. I agree that many spiritual paths do follow a very precise approach. And in fact, I'd reverse this: > Consciousness (Spirit) is an emergent property of matter to this: > Matter is an emergent property of Consciousness/Spirit from a spiritual point of view :)
andrei512 10y ago
I you don't need a more complicated plan than: work a lot, teach others, have fun, never stop learning. You can't plan opportunities..
- edshiro 10y ago
  But you need to be prepared to seize opportunities that are congruent with your aspirations; in fact sometimes you need to make these opportunities happen. Planning therefore is important, but because so many things in between happen, your plan should consist of a far reaching vision so as to allow you to learn along the way, including taking paths that may end up in temporary setbacks. If you don't fail, you don't learn.
  - ivm 10y ago
    And while you're learning, your attitude and world understanding constantly changes so much that you trash the plans of naive older self almost yearly, no?
    - edshiro 10y ago
      Absolutely true. I have changed and changed and changed, and keep changing my world view over time. Some of my core principles though (honesty, fairness, empathy, strong family ties, etc.) remain; and hopefully will stay this way forever :).
nedwin 10y ago
When I was 25 years old I made the plan to move to SF, find a technical cofounder and start a fast growth company. 5 years later I achieved that goal. My plan was nowhere near the detail of this but there were steps along the way. Things changed a lot, and not everything was done in the order I originally planned. With that said, having a clear vision of where I wanted to be and loosely how I was going to get there meant that I could turn down opportunities that may have led me astray, or which didn't further my career/life goals. YMMV.
- matt_wulfeck 10y ago
  Care to share some details about how your business is doing today? Are you profitable?
  - ttam 10y ago
    From his profile on twitter (his handle is on his HN profile) http://neddwyer.com/ http://neddwyer.com/ I'm assuming he was referring to > My last startup was Elto, a marketplace to connect small business owners to freelance web designers. Elto was acquired by GoDaddy in 2015.
- debt 10y ago
  "having a clear vision of where I wanted to be and loosely how I was going to get there meant that I could turn down opportunities that may have led me astray" absolutely crucial advice right dere. distractions can be dream destroying(or enlightening or both)
- hvidgaard 10y ago
  The key is not to detail your life in minute details. It'll never hold anyway. But having a (long term) goal (starting a company, become viable, sell, ect.) and then actively plan to work towards it. If you want to retire at the age of 50, then work towards that. If you want to climb the 7 tallest mountains, then work towards that. As long as you get a little bit closer to your goal every week, you on the right track.
- ensiferum 10y ago
ericdykstra 10y ago
If you're looking for a more holistic plan, one that doesn't just focus on career, check out Self Authoring (http://www.selfauthoring.com/ http://www.selfauthoring.com/) and specifically the Future Authoring course. It was put together by clinical and research psychologists, and has been administered to University students with pretty profound results.
ryandrake 10y ago
I like this because it provides structure and some more concrete (yet still general) advice. Too much career how-to is wishy-washy cliche: crap like "do what you love" and "follow your passion" and "never stop learning". That's fine if you're looking for spirituality. Not so much if you're looking for a solid step-by-step structure to follow.
Xeoncross 10y ago
Not to down play the usefulness of this, but be careful not to follow others ideas that your ultimate goal in life is X career plan. I have more of a "life plan" than a "career plan" since money and hacks/resourcefulness is pretty easy to the HN crowd relative to many other groups. Especially in the west, it takes talent to starve here. A work/life balance is what some people enjoy, while others want a work/work or life/life balance. For example, I am not interested in being worth X millions when I'm 60 at the cost of skipping >50% of life. Even money doesn't help with certain objectives (especially when you must trade time). You have to balance what you want to have accomplished in life vs what you want while living life.
- solarmist 10y ago
  > You have to balance what you want to have accomplished in life vs what you want while living life. This is a great phrase, I find it very insightful. I've never thought about it like that, but I can tell this is a phrase that will alter how I think about my future/life. Thanks for that.
- tgb 10y ago
  You should know that this worksheet is just one small sheet of a fairly comprehensive guide system they have in place at 8000 hours. [1] This part is a little limited in scope, but the full guide is well-balanced. It really encourages useful introspection in an area of life that many people decide by inertia. Their guide is definitely not aimed at getting you to being worth X millions, it definitely is about finding a path that you find fulfilling on several levels and on how to have a job that's a positive impact on the world. I'm consistently impressed with 80000 Hours's output. [1] https://80000hours.org/career-guide/ https://80000hours.org/career-guide/
- iplaw 10y ago
  This is a good post. I was just having a discussion with someone on HN who considered $200k pre-tax to be affluent, and suggested that if you couldn't save $80k post-tax annually, you're doing it wrong. Having lived at $30k, $200k, and now more, I know that $200k isn't as lofty as it sounds. The dollars never seem long enough. It's all about living a life worth living. Part of that is buying time by paying for services - from remodeling, to plumbing and electrical, to landscaping and tree maintenance, to cleaning. Once you have a family and sufficient means, the projects that you used to DIY to save money become tasks that you hire out to save time. Do I want to spend the next six to eight weekends building a massive Ipe deck, saving thousands of dollars, or do I want to pay someone to build it in two weeks so that I have weekends devoted to family, friends, and hobbies? Do I want to spend several hours a week cleaning the entire house, or do I want to pay someone to clean it while I am at work? This can also be applied to subjective enjoyment. Do I want to drive an A-to-B economy car, or do I want to drive a high performance vehicle which I subjectively enjoy driving? I usually choose buying time and buying enjoyment.
westurner 10y ago
> What are your best medium-term options (3-15 years)? > 1. What global problems do you think are most pressing? The 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets w/ statistical indicators, AKA GlobalGoals, are for the whole world through 2030. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals http://www.globalgoals.org http://www.globalgoals.org
- westurner 10y ago
  "Schema.org: Mission, Project, Goal, Objective, Task" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12525141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12525141 could make it easy to connect our local, regional, national, and global goals; and find people with similar objectives and solutions.
MR4D 10y ago
Being in my 40's and reading this, the only thing I can do is quote Tyson: "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." -Mike Tyson
- toomanybeersies 10y ago
  Following that metaphor: it's always a good plan to wear a mouth guard so that your teeth don't get knocked out.
  - ryanmarsh 10y ago
    I dont know what serves as the mouth guard in your analogy but it sure as fuck won't stop you from getting laid out.
    - dathanb82 10y ago
      Nah, but you might still have your teeth afterwards.
  - jasin 10y ago
    This is spot on, because often we prepare by wearing a mouth guard, while in reality their protection against getting knocked out basically zero.
    - LanceH 10y ago
      Not true, a mouth guard absorbs a lot of impact from the lower jaw upwards.
  - paulpauper 10y ago
    wont stop the rest of your face from being bloodied
- adamredwoods 10y ago
  Amen brother. After having a child, I threw all plans out the window.
didibus 10y ago
"If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." - a good friend of mine
blaisio 10y ago
This was copied out of the book "The Start-up of You" by Reid Hoffman. They point this out on their website, but they should really point it out on this Google Doc as well since it's pretty much entirely unoriginal.
deepaksurti 10y ago
Assuming the 10000 hour rule of gaining expertise and toning it down, because in a job you cannot just do deliberate practice for 10K hours :-), I guess a single fulfilling profession for 10 years, where you learn, become good enough to extract mileage out of it and then moving on to a new career, should be plausible. Anyone out here who has done that, much like Tarzan, holding onto the one career while switching to another? I have not yet given this a deep thought, but it looks cool to have multiple professions in a one lifespan but am not sure how to do it. Or is it that as life/age happens and we just have to stick to 1 career/profession. Any thoughts appreciated.
- nvusuvu 10y ago
  I'm an electrical engineer 12 years out of college. I did design work for 5 years, became an electronics quality manager in operations, then design validation test manager in R&D, and now questioning what to do with my career ... I'm leaning towards data analytics guru ...
jakubp 10y ago
Imagine you think on that worksheet and... "What is a fulfilling career to you" -> "I don't know..." "What is your most valuable career capital right now?" -> "No idea, if I knew how to turn something I have/can do into capital I wouldn't be planning things on that level would I?" "What global problems do you think are most pressing" -> How the hell should I know? this is only based on what I read in the media, I have no exposure to those problems. "Which of your options are best?" -> "What? I don't even know which of the options might be worthwhile, let alone having criteria and confidence to judge them in the absolute..." Etc. Etc. You get my point: based on my observations of decision making of people around me, our real difficulty is not in asking those questions, rather it's that we simply do not know what the answers might be. We have no insight. We don't know our greatest strengths (or weaknesses), we don't know what's our biggest career capital, we have no idea what the ideal career for us would look like etc. We have little way of knowing other than trying things out and seeing how they work out. It's easy to say "ask yourself question X", but the problem for people is that they simply do not have answers to those kinds of questions. So what can be done about this? Maybe if you get an experienced mentor who will guide you through answering those questions, that would be progress. I would love to see tools for that kind of thinking.
- sametmax 10y ago
  Knowing what you want is half of the job indeed. And then somewhere down the life you change that phrase to "knowing what you need" and you start all over again.
- pitt1980 10y ago
  Right now I have a 3 and 5 year old while they are not complete blank slates at this point, their range of future possibilities have not been significantly narrowed at this point I've tried to put some thought into how to direct them such that their future possibilities won't be narrowed simply by wasting time aimlessly trying one thing after here is the best I've come up with: 1) develop universal skills There are some skills that are universally useful, regardless of what they wind up doing, My immediate thoughts about what would make these up are: reading skills, persuasive speaking skills (selling/negotiating), persuasive writing skills, some basic knowledge of the main ideas of human psychology, basic knowledge of the main ideas of rationality and logic, basic knowledge of the main ideas of probability and math, (added later after I considered it more), probably some basic financial literacy, probably some basic economic theory, (another edit) knowledge about processes to improve creativity until you reach perhaps the top 10% of ability in each of those skills, any time you spend improving those skills will have good ROI, regardless of what you wind up doing in life 2) read a lot, and pay attention to the law of attraction more skeptical readers will think this is BS, and in strict terms, it probably is bs, but it strikes me as useful bs what I mean by this pay attention to what naturally peaks your curiosity, to what you don't have to make your self want to learn more about our attention streams strike me as a mysterious but powerful force, sometimes you have to fight against them and do things that don't really capture your interests, but the less energy you can spend trying to redirect you attention, the more energy you can spend productively 3) the library is an amazing resource, when something captures you interest, dive as deep as you can for free at the library, dive deep at the library before you dive deep in life, think being a programmer would be a good path? Googling "book list for computer programmers" go through the first page, try to find 5 books the seem to repeat on those lists read them, still interested? yes? great, now you have a lot more information to take next steps. no? that's ok, now you know a lot more about what computer programmers do you can do this for any path in life, its a significantly cheaper method, in both time and money, for trying out a lot of career paths than getting formal credentials, and then getting a professional job in something (not that you shouldn't do those things, but those are expensive steps, you should take cheaper steps first) I think this is an interesting blog post about diving deep: http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/12/breakdancing-universe/ http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/12/breakdancing-universe/ I think this is another interesting link, only tangentially related http://lesswrong.com/lw/4su/how_to_be_happy/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/4su/how_to_be_happy/
johnward 10y ago
"What is a fulfilling career to you? " I'm out.

230 points by BreakoutList 10y ago

Before I got to the bottom of the document I wondered if this was a bigger thing I'd not heard of before, and indeed: creators of it: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/career-planning/ https://80000hours.org/career-guide/career-planning/. I quite like the idea of an "ABZ" plan. It's often far too easy to think things will just carry on as is. Thinking about these things, for me the "Z" in particular, is something I don't think people do enough until it's too late. Thanks for providing a template doc like this as a low friction way to actually start doing it.

DelaneyM 10y ago

I can't help but feel career plans, even inherently flexible ones such as the 80000 hour plan, discourage serendipity and encourage sunk-cost thinking. I'm not saying this is a bad idea, just that for the specific HackerNews demographic it may be a bit of an anti-pattern.

cottsak 10y ago
Yeh, I'd also like to know whether the HN demographic really has a hard time at finding work?
- isxek 10y ago
  Some of them do.
- shimon 10y ago
  Finding work easily doesn't mean that you'll just be automatically swept into the career you want. Some thoughtful planning is important even if it just helps you know what to say no to.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  It's not super hard to imagine. It's not like awesome jobs grow on trees, or that they're giving them away at the airport. If you're one of the few people in the world who can simply point to their ideal company, declare "I shall work there!" and then [poof] you're there, then congratulations on your good fortune. For the rest of us, finding the next rung on the ladder is an endless struggle, and there are not a lot of practical "how to" resources out there. I'm 40, have been working in technology for close to 20 years, and have had the great fortune to have stayed employed for most of those years, but for the entirety of this I've considered myself "underemployed". I've woken up each day thinking "boy I could be doing so much more if only I wasn't limited by [ ROLE | COMPANY | GEOGRAPHY | BOSS | ETC ]. Don't get me wrong--I feel grateful that tech is one of those careers where you at least have a chance to improve where you are, but these opportunities are still few, far between, and you have to pound the pavement to find them. You do need to plan and you need to ask the right questions of yourself. I like this article because it provides some structure for your plan and helps you to think about the good questions to ask yourself.
- ryhamz 10y ago
  This is not about simply finding work. It's about finding the work you want in the long run, which is different.
- morgante 10y ago
  Planning isn't just for people who have a hard time finding work. It's not even just for people who are unsatisfied in their work. My entire professional life I've never had trouble finding, often very fulfilling work with great compensation. But I always had a niggling feeling that I could be doing more. Planning helped me to realize that my true goal is to make an impact (even a small one) on millions of people, so now I'm taking the steps to make that happen. Also, to paraphrase Eisenhower, it's often not the plans which are most beneficial but there mere act of planning. My plans usually turn to rubbish, but the process of planning helps me to center and crystalize my thinking.
ethbro 10y ago
Related question, what's the opposite of sunk cost / escalation of commitment? In this context, your comment made me think about the counter point, i.e. "I'll be able to make that decision later". Is there a name for procrastination bias?
- DelaneyM 10y ago
  "optionality bias"
spraak 10y ago
In my experience as one who tends towards spirituality, intuition etc over science - this type of path is jut the balance I need to keep moving towards my life's goals. I overly focus on serendipity and synchronicity to where I often don't accomplish much practical
- nsomaru 10y ago
  Strange that you think spirituality and science are mutually exclusive.
  - spraak 10y ago
    Can you explain how you think they aren't? I think they can still be found together but generally they're at opposite ends. Also science was just one term I could think to describe that end of the spectrum
    - nsomaru 10y ago
      Sure. If you mean 'science the world view' which means the philosophical stance that Consciousness (Spirit) is an emergent property of matter (amongst other things), then yes there's a spectrum and they're opposed. On the other hand if you mean 'science the approach' — then there are many spiritual paths that follow the approach of the presentation of results and a method by which those results may be verified or refuted by a practitioner.
      - spraak 10y ago
        Thanks for explaining! I appreciate the differentiation you've made between the world view and the approach, as I'd forgotten about that. I agree that many spiritual paths do follow a very precise approach. And in fact, I'd reverse this: > Consciousness (Spirit) is an emergent property of matter to this: > Matter is an emergent property of Consciousness/Spirit from a spiritual point of view :)

andrei512 10y ago

I you don't need a more complicated plan than: work a lot, teach others, have fun, never stop learning. You can't plan opportunities..

edshiro 10y ago
But you need to be prepared to seize opportunities that are congruent with your aspirations; in fact sometimes you need to make these opportunities happen. Planning therefore is important, but because so many things in between happen, your plan should consist of a far reaching vision so as to allow you to learn along the way, including taking paths that may end up in temporary setbacks. If you don't fail, you don't learn.
- ivm 10y ago
  And while you're learning, your attitude and world understanding constantly changes so much that you trash the plans of naive older self almost yearly, no?
  - edshiro 10y ago
    Absolutely true. I have changed and changed and changed, and keep changing my world view over time. Some of my core principles though (honesty, fairness, empathy, strong family ties, etc.) remain; and hopefully will stay this way forever :).

nedwin 10y ago

When I was 25 years old I made the plan to move to SF, find a technical cofounder and start a fast growth company. 5 years later I achieved that goal. My plan was nowhere near the detail of this but there were steps along the way. Things changed a lot, and not everything was done in the order I originally planned. With that said, having a clear vision of where I wanted to be and loosely how I was going to get there meant that I could turn down opportunities that may have led me astray, or which didn't further my career/life goals. YMMV.

matt_wulfeck 10y ago
Care to share some details about how your business is doing today? Are you profitable?
- ttam 10y ago
  From his profile on twitter (his handle is on his HN profile) http://neddwyer.com/ http://neddwyer.com/ I'm assuming he was referring to > My last startup was Elto, a marketplace to connect small business owners to freelance web designers. Elto was acquired by GoDaddy in 2015.
debt 10y ago
"having a clear vision of where I wanted to be and loosely how I was going to get there meant that I could turn down opportunities that may have led me astray" absolutely crucial advice right dere. distractions can be dream destroying(or enlightening or both)
hvidgaard 10y ago
The key is not to detail your life in minute details. It'll never hold anyway. But having a (long term) goal (starting a company, become viable, sell, ect.) and then actively plan to work towards it. If you want to retire at the age of 50, then work towards that. If you want to climb the 7 tallest mountains, then work towards that. As long as you get a little bit closer to your goal every week, you on the right track.
ensiferum 10y ago

ericdykstra 10y ago

If you're looking for a more holistic plan, one that doesn't just focus on career, check out Self Authoring (http://www.selfauthoring.com/ http://www.selfauthoring.com/) and specifically the Future Authoring course. It was put together by clinical and research psychologists, and has been administered to University students with pretty profound results.

ryandrake 10y ago

I like this because it provides structure and some more concrete (yet still general) advice. Too much career how-to is wishy-washy cliche: crap like "do what you love" and "follow your passion" and "never stop learning". That's fine if you're looking for spirituality. Not so much if you're looking for a solid step-by-step structure to follow.

Xeoncross 10y ago

Not to down play the usefulness of this, but be careful not to follow others ideas that your ultimate goal in life is X career plan. I have more of a "life plan" than a "career plan" since money and hacks/resourcefulness is pretty easy to the HN crowd relative to many other groups. Especially in the west, it takes talent to starve here. A work/life balance is what some people enjoy, while others want a work/work or life/life balance. For example, I am not interested in being worth X millions when I'm 60 at the cost of skipping >50% of life. Even money doesn't help with certain objectives (especially when you must trade time). You have to balance what you want to have accomplished in life vs what you want while living life.

solarmist 10y ago
> You have to balance what you want to have accomplished in life vs what you want while living life. This is a great phrase, I find it very insightful. I've never thought about it like that, but I can tell this is a phrase that will alter how I think about my future/life. Thanks for that.
tgb 10y ago
You should know that this worksheet is just one small sheet of a fairly comprehensive guide system they have in place at 8000 hours. [1] This part is a little limited in scope, but the full guide is well-balanced. It really encourages useful introspection in an area of life that many people decide by inertia. Their guide is definitely not aimed at getting you to being worth X millions, it definitely is about finding a path that you find fulfilling on several levels and on how to have a job that's a positive impact on the world. I'm consistently impressed with 80000 Hours's output. [1] https://80000hours.org/career-guide/ https://80000hours.org/career-guide/
iplaw 10y ago
This is a good post. I was just having a discussion with someone on HN who considered $200k pre-tax to be affluent, and suggested that if you couldn't save $80k post-tax annually, you're doing it wrong. Having lived at $30k, $200k, and now more, I know that $200k isn't as lofty as it sounds. The dollars never seem long enough. It's all about living a life worth living. Part of that is buying time by paying for services - from remodeling, to plumbing and electrical, to landscaping and tree maintenance, to cleaning. Once you have a family and sufficient means, the projects that you used to DIY to save money become tasks that you hire out to save time. Do I want to spend the next six to eight weekends building a massive Ipe deck, saving thousands of dollars, or do I want to pay someone to build it in two weeks so that I have weekends devoted to family, friends, and hobbies? Do I want to spend several hours a week cleaning the entire house, or do I want to pay someone to clean it while I am at work? This can also be applied to subjective enjoyment. Do I want to drive an A-to-B economy car, or do I want to drive a high performance vehicle which I subjectively enjoy driving? I usually choose buying time and buying enjoyment.

westurner 10y ago

> What are your best medium-term options (3-15 years)? > 1. What global problems do you think are most pressing? The 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets w/ statistical indicators, AKA GlobalGoals, are for the whole world through 2030. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals http://www.globalgoals.org http://www.globalgoals.org

westurner 10y ago
"Schema.org: Mission, Project, Goal, Objective, Task" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12525141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12525141 could make it easy to connect our local, regional, national, and global goals; and find people with similar objectives and solutions.

MR4D 10y ago

Being in my 40's and reading this, the only thing I can do is quote Tyson: "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." -Mike Tyson

toomanybeersies 10y ago
Following that metaphor: it's always a good plan to wear a mouth guard so that your teeth don't get knocked out.
- ryanmarsh 10y ago
  I dont know what serves as the mouth guard in your analogy but it sure as fuck won't stop you from getting laid out.
  - dathanb82 10y ago
    Nah, but you might still have your teeth afterwards.
- jasin 10y ago
  This is spot on, because often we prepare by wearing a mouth guard, while in reality their protection against getting knocked out basically zero.
  - LanceH 10y ago
    Not true, a mouth guard absorbs a lot of impact from the lower jaw upwards.
- paulpauper 10y ago
  wont stop the rest of your face from being bloodied
adamredwoods 10y ago
Amen brother. After having a child, I threw all plans out the window.

didibus 10y ago

"If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." - a good friend of mine

blaisio 10y ago

This was copied out of the book "The Start-up of You" by Reid Hoffman. They point this out on their website, but they should really point it out on this Google Doc as well since it's pretty much entirely unoriginal.

deepaksurti 10y ago

Assuming the 10000 hour rule of gaining expertise and toning it down, because in a job you cannot just do deliberate practice for 10K hours :-), I guess a single fulfilling profession for 10 years, where you learn, become good enough to extract mileage out of it and then moving on to a new career, should be plausible. Anyone out here who has done that, much like Tarzan, holding onto the one career while switching to another? I have not yet given this a deep thought, but it looks cool to have multiple professions in a one lifespan but am not sure how to do it. Or is it that as life/age happens and we just have to stick to 1 career/profession. Any thoughts appreciated.

nvusuvu 10y ago
I'm an electrical engineer 12 years out of college. I did design work for 5 years, became an electronics quality manager in operations, then design validation test manager in R&D, and now questioning what to do with my career ... I'm leaning towards data analytics guru ...

jakubp 10y ago

Imagine you think on that worksheet and... "What is a fulfilling career to you" -> "I don't know..." "What is your most valuable career capital right now?" -> "No idea, if I knew how to turn something I have/can do into capital I wouldn't be planning things on that level would I?" "What global problems do you think are most pressing" -> How the hell should I know? this is only based on what I read in the media, I have no exposure to those problems. "Which of your options are best?" -> "What? I don't even know which of the options might be worthwhile, let alone having criteria and confidence to judge them in the absolute..." Etc. Etc. You get my point: based on my observations of decision making of people around me, our real difficulty is not in asking those questions, rather it's that we simply do not know what the answers might be. We have no insight. We don't know our greatest strengths (or weaknesses), we don't know what's our biggest career capital, we have no idea what the ideal career for us would look like etc. We have little way of knowing other than trying things out and seeing how they work out. It's easy to say "ask yourself question X", but the problem for people is that they simply do not have answers to those kinds of questions. So what can be done about this? Maybe if you get an experienced mentor who will guide you through answering those questions, that would be progress. I would love to see tools for that kind of thinking.

sametmax 10y ago
Knowing what you want is half of the job indeed. And then somewhere down the life you change that phrase to "knowing what you need" and you start all over again.
pitt1980 10y ago
Right now I have a 3 and 5 year old while they are not complete blank slates at this point, their range of future possibilities have not been significantly narrowed at this point I've tried to put some thought into how to direct them such that their future possibilities won't be narrowed simply by wasting time aimlessly trying one thing after here is the best I've come up with: 1) develop universal skills There are some skills that are universally useful, regardless of what they wind up doing, My immediate thoughts about what would make these up are: reading skills, persuasive speaking skills (selling/negotiating), persuasive writing skills, some basic knowledge of the main ideas of human psychology, basic knowledge of the main ideas of rationality and logic, basic knowledge of the main ideas of probability and math, (added later after I considered it more), probably some basic financial literacy, probably some basic economic theory, (another edit) knowledge about processes to improve creativity until you reach perhaps the top 10% of ability in each of those skills, any time you spend improving those skills will have good ROI, regardless of what you wind up doing in life 2) read a lot, and pay attention to the law of attraction more skeptical readers will think this is BS, and in strict terms, it probably is bs, but it strikes me as useful bs what I mean by this pay attention to what naturally peaks your curiosity, to what you don't have to make your self want to learn more about our attention streams strike me as a mysterious but powerful force, sometimes you have to fight against them and do things that don't really capture your interests, but the less energy you can spend trying to redirect you attention, the more energy you can spend productively 3) the library is an amazing resource, when something captures you interest, dive as deep as you can for free at the library, dive deep at the library before you dive deep in life, think being a programmer would be a good path? Googling "book list for computer programmers" go through the first page, try to find 5 books the seem to repeat on those lists read them, still interested? yes? great, now you have a lot more information to take next steps. no? that's ok, now you know a lot more about what computer programmers do you can do this for any path in life, its a significantly cheaper method, in both time and money, for trying out a lot of career paths than getting formal credentials, and then getting a professional job in something (not that you shouldn't do those things, but those are expensive steps, you should take cheaper steps first) I think this is an interesting blog post about diving deep: http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/12/breakdancing-universe/ http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/12/breakdancing-universe/ I think this is another interesting link, only tangentially related http://lesswrong.com/lw/4su/how_to_be_happy/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/4su/how_to_be_happy/

johnward 10y ago

"What is a fulfilling career to you? " I'm out.