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Successful people set constraints rather than chasing goals
- wslh 1y agoSidenote: If you're curious, this blog was created using Ghost: <https://github.com/tryghost/ghost https://github.com/tryghost/ghost>
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- chairmansteve 1y agoI have a google doc called "The No Project". Every day I try and add something that I have said "no" to. Projects, feature requests etc. I don't always have an entry, but it keeps No top of mind. Not exactly a constraint, but....
- bluGill 1y agoThe problem with that is you become the "no guy" even when yes is the right answer. Saying no to bad things is good, but you don't want to look too hard for reasons to say no lest you say no to something worth doing.
- chairmansteve 1y agoThe problem is, I'm the "yes guy".
- jxjnskkzxxhx 1y agoThere's a saying for this. If you're not building your dream, someone will hire you to build theirs.
- barrenko 1y ago"You don't rise to the level of your goal, you fall to the level of your training"? Something like that?
- jxjnskkzxxhx 1y agoPhew that hits hard.
- nkzd 1y agoI recognised myself in this one. Good job.
- jona777than 1y agoI would like to think of this as Operational Gravity, or something like that. Might help it stick. Good quote. Thanks for sharing.
- croes 1y agoSo the latter is better because you get paid.
- jxjnskkzxxhx 1y agoI'm glad that people like you exist!
- croes 1y agoWithout us all is just dreams and nothing is done. Every big company wouldn‘t exist.
- jxjnskkzxxhx 1y agoYou're right, and I would have no one to do the hard work for me.
- kristianp 1y agoAren't you saying the opposite of the article? A "dream" is a goal in slightly different terminology.
- JohnKemeny 1y agoI didn't know that's what smart people do. Does the author mean that if I create limits, I am or become smart? Or is this blog post merely an observation?
- brianpan 1y agoThere are 4 things that are true in this world: 1) successful people set constraints, 2) successful people set goals, 3) unsuccessful people set constraints, and 4) unsuccessful people set goals. You're welcome.
- yarekt 1y agoYea I also spotted that. Never liked the format of “Successful people do X. You should do it too”. Interesting article though, somehow I found goal setting never worked for me well, but I find clarity in constraints.
- 55555 1y agoYour website is beautiful on desktop. I had to look up to make sure I was still in my browser. Very cool.
- mieses 1y agoagreed. and this was a good essay.
- abdibrokhim 1y agoagree. it reminds me my own personal website (yaps.gg)
- TheEdonian 1y agoNot a real fan of this approach. This is what's called emerging strategy where you react on what happening around you (not to be confused with agile where you look at what's happening around you and then deciding a course of action). Problem here is that you are never in control of where you are going to, and wasting a lot of energy and work switching over to the new strategy.
- boars_tiffs 1y agoyou could actually define the goal as a set of constraints.
- TheEdonian 1y agoWell that would be subtractive: I don't know what I want, but I don't want X & Y. You would steer yes, but it would be very broad. You're not really working towards something, you're working away from multiple things.
- jona777than 1y agoI find that orienting around results can help unlock whether positive or negative space (a goal or constraints set) is the better focus. In my experience, there are times when goals do not serve me, but rather hinder me. This is purely from regularly observing results. In those cases, pivoting to a focus on some well defined constraints has yielded better results. As long as the direction is the same between the two, that might still be considered proactive.
- kbrkbr 1y agoWhile I enjoyed the essay, I have my quarrels with it. First of all the over-generalization: why would all successful people do the same thing? Why would there be only one road to succees? People are different. Second: the lack of definitions. Is "leave everyone better than you found them" a goal? It would appear so. What about "leave no one worse-or-equal than you found them"? Looks like a constraint. And yet they are the same rule. Lastly: the lack of backup. Except for some interpreted anecdotes, there's not much evidence there. Points for creativity and engaging style. But could do more on evidence and clarity.
- maxrimue 1y agoTo your second point: For me, the major difference between goals and constraints would be that I can clearly achieve a good goal, but a constraint is something that will never be fulfilled. A good goal is to run and complete a 10k marathon, it's easy to tell when you're done, or if you failed, potentially even measuring how far off you were. But a constraint would accompany you until you choose to disregard it. You can respect a constraint, but you can never complete it, only in the context of a finite project. To me, a lot of this post sounds like goals vs habits, caring more about what you do today than what you may achieve sometime in the future, only that the habits are constraints here, so not doing something. In short, "leave everyone better than you found them" is something you can adhere to constantly (like a habit), but for it to be a good goal you would have to know when you're done finding people I guess. Ultimately, what I read from this post is that constraints are used to provide identity, to help you guide yourself everyday. And maybe that's what you need more than goals if a lack of identity (in your work) is what's troubling you.
- misja111 1y agoI have limited myself to not setting any constraints.
- jk431 1y agoParadox
- revskill 1y agoRecursive without base.
- itsmemattchung 1y agoHaha I love this
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ensocode 1y agoI think both goals and constraints are powerful tools for achieving success. Goals give you direction, while constraints shape your mindset and drive consistent progress. For example, “write every day” is a constraint — and it reliably leads to improvement. I enjoyed the essay. It’s not a complete system, but I appreciate its focus on consistent action over goal-setting. Thanks for sharing!
- jph 1y ago"When John Boyd, the brilliant / irascible military strategist, developed the OODA loop, he worked within the limits of jet fighter dogfights." Boyd is a superb recommendation for startup programmers to read. Boyd and the OODA loop can completely transform teams who aim to build software quickly. My OODA loop notes for tech teams are here: https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/ooda-loop https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/ooda-loop
- kqr 1y agoMaybe you're the right person to clear this up. Ages ago I read in a HN comment that the OODA loop is often misunderstood to be a sequence of steps, rather than something more continuous? And that people's explanations of it are very different from what Boyd had in mind. People treat it more as a Shewhart PDSA cycle rather than the integrated, concurrent dynamic process Boyd described it as. Since then I've avoided reading others' re-explanations of it, and instead tried to find any original writing from Boyd on it, to shape my own understanding of it before corrupting it with others' misunderstandings. The problem is I have been unable to find any original Boyd writing on it. Could you guide me in the right direction?
- aspenmayer 1y agoNot OP. Have you perused these references from the Wikipedia page for OODA loop? The reference to a “supposed slide set” sounds interesting; perhaps that is what you’re alluding to regarding source material being hard to find? Boyd, John R. (3 September 1976). Destruction and Creation (PDF). U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Destruction_%26_Creation.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Destruct... Boyd, John, R. (28 June 1995). "The Essence of Winning and Losing". danford.net. A supposed five-slide set by Boyd. https://danford.net/boyd/essence.htm https://danford.net/boyd/essence.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop
- aspenmayer 1y agoAn interesting video from another time this came up on HN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdK4y6O-llE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdK4y6O-llE > OODA Loop & Evolutionary Epistemology of John Boyd by Chuck Spinney From this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26466750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26466750 They also mention a video by Chet Richards and how it relates OODA to business context. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hDhznBtN24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hDhznBtN24 The Q&A with both Chet Richards and Chuck Spinney is also worth a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWfbPoDuEwg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWfbPoDuEwg
- boars_tiffs 1y agoreminds me of hunter's take-- https://fs.blog/hunter-s-thompson-to-hume-logan/ https://fs.blog/hunter-s-thompson-to-hume-logan/
- close04 1y agoAren't these 2 complementary things? Goals tell you what you need to achieve, constraints tell you what road to take or rather avoid taking, to get there. You need to set goals if you don't want to wander around for a while on the "ok" paths until you stumble onto something that might be your target or just a local maximum.
- alexey-salmin 1y agoI think this sums up my approach to work and life even though I never put it into words. I've never set myself a career goal, but being uncompromising about the work I do pulled me up rather quickly in every single place I worked in. This is only possible in workplaces that aren't stagnant, where your work actually matters, but by coincidence this was the constraint that I chose for myself long ago. Same goes for my running hobby: I don't have a goal to run the marathon, but I run 5-6 times a week and run a marathon almost every weekend. The constraint I have is to push myself to run even when I don't want to. So far I've been doing better than some of my friends who has a "marathon goal" but only run when they feel like it.
- jonplackett 1y agoThe Five Obstructions is a beautiful example of how constraints - counterintuitively - make creativity easier not harder. Lars Von Trier challenges Jørgen Leth to remake his classic short ‘The Perfect Human’ five times under increasingly ridiculous constraints. Really worth a watch. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0354575/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0354575/
- speed_spread 1y agoThanks but one of my constraints is to never watch another Lars Von Trier movie.
- jonplackett 1y agoIt’s not really his movie. He is cast intentionally as the biggest asshole they can find who will make difficult obstructions - he does a good job.
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- _1tem 1y agoI always get into this argument with people who always want to "keep their options open". No, that's just refusing to set a constraint, and that's a decision in itself, that usually leads to the most mediocre outcome. Reminds of something that Paul Graham once wrote: one of the most consequential decisions you can make in life is the city you choose to live in. Now I realize this is just a big constraint you place on yourself: location. Other big constraints are: marriage, religion, and choosing to go the VC vs. bootstrapped route in a SaaS business. Going the VC route constrains your version of success to extremely high growth (a very successful bootstrapped business would be a VC failure), while going the bootstrapped route constrains your growth rate potential (you might make millions but not billions). I especially love this heading from the article: Goals are for Games. Constraints are for Worlds. I would add: successful people navigate worlds. Children play games. Many people are still stuck in a game-playing mindset even into their 40s, rather than navigating their world, they are still stuck in a goal-oriented game, such as a "career". Right out of university they look for their next well-defined game. At some point the complexity of the world collapses all your games. Then you hit your mid-life crisis.
- simultsop 1y agoThe definition of success remains personal. Employing certain biases, too. Being successful in World Choice and Gameplay is relative, but it is also proportional to the biases.
- rootsudo 1y agoI needed to read this today, it makes perfect sense. Thank you.
- kalaksi 1y ago> I would add: successful people navigate worlds. Children play games. Seems kind of arrogant. I personally view goals and constraints as different kind of tools that are both helpful.
- loloquwowndueo 1y agoYeah and I still play games so what.
- marcus_holmes 1y agoI prefer timeboxing to goals. Rather than "I will achieve this fixed thing" I say "I will change my behaviour in this manner for this amount of time and see what happens". It works so much better. It emphasises that the only thing I can control: my behaviour. Or not: plenty of times the thing that happened is that I couldn't keep up the desired behaviour for the desired time. That is also a valid outcome. I am not in control of events, or circumstances, or other people's behaviour, or any of the other things that determine whether I succeed in achieving a goal or not. Because the effort is not linked to the outcome, when it's clear that the effort is not going to achieve the outcome, then that doesn't disincentivise the effort. The effort becomes the point. Which is really valuable in its own right.
- r0b05 1y agoAs it happens, you are creating a time constraint.
- _elephant 1y agoOne part that really hit home for me was how constraints actually help you cut through the noise. Like for me, I stopped trying to get to the perfect gym routine and just decided I’d never work out for more than 30 minutes. That one rule made it way easier to actually show up and do it. No more feeling like I had to have some big goal or perfect system. Just a small boundary that worked better for me.
- fedeb95 1y agointeresting equality assumption: the title of the post says "successful", the title in the web page says "smart". This post have been flagged as uninteresting by my personal heuristic.
- dominicrose 1y agoWether they are imposed on us or self-imposed, constraints reduce chaos. But while a chess coach will tell you not to leave pieces hanging a top chess AI will leave pieces hanging in order to gain a more important long-term advantage. It thrives in what looks like chaos to a less capable player. I think we just have to know our limits and set a reasonable amount of constraints accordingly. You don't want to burn your wings.
- miotts 1y agoInteresting article. But I think the author is implicitly considering an agentic individual who does something, because 'total inaction' is a valid solution for a constraint-oriented approach (unless we are assuming constraints that force you to do action like "do X every day"). Otherwise, you can be perfectly aware of the limits of your situation while not doing anything. Having a direction (or goals) has the side effect of being a strategy that is biased towards action. Theory of Change, I think, is kind of an intersection between the two. You have an idea of what you want and then proceed backward to your current situation, address the limits, and try to increase the probability of making it happen. It is planning and "plans are scripts. And reality is improvisation" but if you act randomly and you constantly improvise without a direction, you are in a brownian motion with an average displacement of 0.
- metalman 1y agogoals or constraints are just different life outlooks, and could be rephrased and characterised as overly ambitious and giving up depending on which finger was pointing where as to the worlds complexity, that realy depends on definitions, and how much situational detail is included in "different" so called profesions, which to illustrate I will point out that, no one who has not taken on formal(paid) students and actualy proffesed there occupation is in fact a profesional. my real point is that any discussion of the things that are exclusivly human constructs is stuck in a world of arbitrary definitions and is meaningless unless there is a strict adhearance to those defintions. there are dictionarys, use them
- teddyh 1y agoA.k.a. “goals vs. systems”: • <https://web.archive.org/web/20210811125743/https://www.scottadamssays.com/2013/11/18/goals-vs-systems/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210811125743/https://www.scott...> Alternatively, as a ~5-minute video: • <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcKTYvupJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcKTYvupJw>
- bloomca 1y agoSystem in itself is not super productive. It can work with implied goals (usually if you have a lot of experience). The most resilient structure is a web of interconnected goals: even if you fail at some, the web will not break. The more interconnected your goals are, the higher your chances of success.
- rswail 1y agoMy email sig (remember those) is: -- "Design depends largely on constraints." - Charles Eames Remember when email sigs were limited to 4 lines and had to have the double hyphen and a space on a line above?
- imp0cat 1y agoThe dash, dash, space is still a defacto standard signature separator.
- OJFord 1y ago> Remember when email sigs were limited to 4 lines and had to have the double hyphen and a space on a line above? I do not - sounds like a specific email client's thing rather than something in any IETF RFC.
- thom 1y agoThis was more or less universal in the days of Usenet.
- rswail 1y agoIt's from the pre-web internet of usenet, smtp and uucp in the 1980s. Back in the deep dark past of bang email addresses and HOSTS.TXT when all Australian email addresses had !munnari at the end and everyone knew about !decvax and how to connect to it.
- myself248 1y agoRemember when echomail taglines were supposed to be a single line of no more than 70 characters?
- kalaksi 1y agoSeems a little contradictory. For example: "Constraints scale better because they don’t assume knowledge. They are adaptive. They respond to feedback. A small team that decides, "We will not hire until we have product-market fit" has created a constraint that guides decisions without locking in a prediction. A founder who says, "I will only build products I can explain to a teenager in 60 seconds" is using a constraint as a filtering mechanism." I think sensible constraints are based on knowledge. Goals can also respond to feedback, not be indefinitely locked-in. But they do differ as tools. The small team that decided to not hire probably created that constraint to get to some goal, e.g. profitability, and the constraint is based on a prediction about what should work best. Similarly, the 60 sec constraint probably serves some goal. Why are goals so bad again?
- ClaraForm 1y agoThe funny thing is, I think either goals or a constraint are a tool that should serve the user. Constraints that don't automatically allow the user to achieve goals they would have otherwise accomplished, and that are meaningful and important to them, are useless constraints. I think figuring out the constraints one likes to work with can act as a great filter once someone knows what kind of success, goals, values and life they want to inhabit. Otherwise, it's as arbitrary as goal setting. For me, I parroted other people's cool-sounding goals for a lot of my life, achieving varying degrees of success and happiness. Only in retrospect can I look at my favourite success and failure stories and consider which constraints, if I held them earlier, would have helped me narrow down to those favourite storylines from the get-go. Those constraints, I keep near and dear to my heart and attention in my daily life. I don't think there's a way to set a meaningful constraint before practicing setting goals first. Walk before you run, etc. etc.
- contingencies 1y agoAbsence of execution equals bounty of potential.
- cft 1y ago@grok summarize
- gblargg 1y agoTop-down (goals) vs. bottom-up (constraints)?
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoI’ve always found an “heuristic” approach useful. Instead of saying “I want to be there, then.” (A goal), or “I won’t accept a less than 40% success rate.” (A constraint), I say “That hill seems to be the one I want to climb. I know that it gets colder, as I go up the mountain, so I’ll pack some long underwear.” But I suspect that my own definition of “success” may be somewhat orthogonal to that of a lot of folks, hereabouts.
- jona777than 1y agoI personally have found it effective to oscillate between having a goal and defining constraints in some _direction_. There are points on the journey where articulating a specific goal is helpful. At other times, I get more results with a few well-defined constraints. It can depend upon the season, but both have been solid tools for progress.
- maaaaattttt 1y agoThe Fountainhead has many flaws (IMO) but a scene I remember very well that I recall often, is the one where Peter Keating finally reaches the top of the firm, sits in his office, and starts crying. To me, and I guess to the author, it represents this aspect of having externally defined goals (as opposed to personnaly/intrinsic defined) and how unfulfilled you feel if/when you achieve them. People (me included) often get confused and think that their goal of climbing the career ladder or being able to afford the nice <anything> is goal set by themselves only, when in fact it is a goal most likely induced by society and/or to reach a given social status. If you pause for a second and think honestly about your current goals you can probably identify the ones that are truly yours and the ones that are expected by society. In the book "The subtle art of not giving a fuck" there is in addition to that the notion of open ended goals as a rule of thumb of good goals to have. And this to me is probably the equivalent of "constraints" in this essay. Make sure the goals you follow are set by you and not expectations of society and try to make and formulate them as open ended goals.
- rorylaitila 1y agoConstraints in one dimension can allow unconstrained movement in another dimension. I use this all of the time in my revenue consulting. A classic example: given fixed costs, if you constrain margin, price must be unconstrained and be free to move up or down. If you constrain price, then margin must be free to fluctuate. The error is when the client has goal like "We need to sell at $X to keep up with competitors and our margin needs to be Y" while costs are unable to change. That is two competing mutually exclusive goals. I use the financial reality of these constraints to help get at the bottom of their true goals.
- rafaepta 1y agoI sometimes feel guilty. I’ve tried to set goals (I really have) but it’s just not how I’m wired. I tend to improvise my way through things. Even as a kid, I remember never feeling that urge to "win" at anything. Sports, board games, whatever. Other kids would light up with competition. I’d just… show up, participate, drift through it. I always felt slightly out of sync with that whole dynamic. That’s why this line hit me so hard: “Some of the most powerful forms of progress emerge from people who stopped trying to win and started building new game boards entirely.” Maybe that’s been the point all along. Thanks for sharing this.
- pavlov 1y agoI’ve always felt the same way. What’s the point of winning in a game? Why are some people so obsessed with that kind of competition? The rules are artificial, it’s somebody else’s box. You’re mostly just training yourself to accept external reward functions uncritically. When these boxed-in competitive people age, usually money becomes their terminal external reward, but they don’t seem to know what they want to actually do with it.
- bluGill 1y agoI always thought of winning a game as proof of my skill in the game. All those hours of studying the rules, practicing moves, or whatever it takes have proven to pay off because I win once in a while - or if I lose it proves that I didn't do enough and is motivation to study/practice enough. Playing the game is in itself fun as well even if I lose and the constraints of the rules makes the game possible. What I don't get is watching someone else play a game. I want to do it myself. If I'm watching the game it is to learn how someone else does it. OTOH, I can sit in the audience and watch someone else play music for hours... YMMV.
- RiverCrochet 1y agoAgree. Winning a game is worth it if you want the prize and the prize will benefit you. But, as you say, doing this uncritically is bad. If the prize will not benefit you, or is so vague as to not matter, and you still feel the need to win, you're being manipulated.
- kwamenum86 1y agoTo me, this sounds like a reframing of the classic advice “focus on your process”. Success is emergent - it can rarely be brute forced. What matters is the process you use for navigating life, any success you realize is a byproduct of your process. This snippet from the article illustrates what I mean: “One person sets a goal: become a best-selling author. Another imposes a constraint: write every day, but never write what bores me. The first may spend years pitching, networking, contorting themselves into marketable shapes. The second may accidentally build a following simply because the work sustains itself.”
- pelagic_sky 1y agoAbout 15 years ago I set a constraint that I would design and publish sets of free vector assets on my website. I wanted a reason to practice vector art, I wanted to give back to the design community. What came from it was recognition and job offers. Last year I tried to set a constraint to write one blog article a month on my experiences in the design world. I failed at that because I wanted to add all the supporting images and just ended up putting too much constraints on myself.
- j7ake 1y agoIsn’t “write everyday” a goal? The author seems to be distinguishing goals that are externally motivated (eg win award) vs internal (eg practice every day)
- fc417fc802 1y agoDefinitional issue. In everyday speech you could certainly say that it is. However as it's used here it's a constraint. For example "write the essay that's due on wednesday" is a goal while "work on english homework for 30 minutes every afternoon" is a constraint. The difference is between a discreet event versus a general behavior.
- ednite 1y agoFor me, goals define the what and when, they give direction and timeline. Constraints define the how and why, they shape focus, discipline, and intention. Together, they form a system that keeps progress going. I don’t see them as opposing ideas. Constraints and goals work best together for most of my real-world projects. Still a great read and interesting point of discussion.
- GPerson 1y agoI think the article sets up a pretty silly and false dichotomy between goals and constraints. You’re not doing anything without planning, and you’re not doing anything with only planning. Anyways, the following part does resonate with me. “Setting goals feels like action. It gives you the warm sense of progress without the discomfort of change. You can spend hours calibrating, optimizing, refining your goals. You can build a Notion dashboard. You can make a spreadsheet. You can go on a dopamine-fueled productivity binge and still never do anything meaningful.”
- weakfish 1y agoThe quote mentioned reminds me of one of key lessons of Oliver Burkeman’s wonderful book, Four Thousand Weeks. Highly recommend - it’s a book about happiness disguised as a book about productivity.
- layer8 1y agoThe article is mostly talking about life goals or ambitions: “There are times when goals make sense. Training for a marathon. Preparing for an exam. Trying to ship a product by a hard deadline. In finite, controlled, well-understood domains, goals are fine. “But smart people often face ambiguous, ill-defined problems. Should I switch careers? Start a company? Move cities? Build a media business? In those spaces, setting a goal is like mapping a jungle with a Sharpie. Constraints are the machete.” “Do you want to be someone, or do you want to do something? “Goals often come from the first desire. Constraints come from the second. “One is about image. The other is about identity. “And the latter has more room to grow.” There is a better article hiding in there, but I think it is making a good point.
- bityard 1y agoIn business/investing circles, this is known as "analysis paralysis." There is no limit to the amount of preparation you can do in anticipation of a big purchase or effort, but past a certain point the returns are not only diminishing but substantially negative due to the lost opportunity cost. In a lot of contexts, taking action with incomplete information is better in the long run than spending a lot of time weighing every decision and taking fewer actions as a result. And there are studies out there that show this. An example: Not that I advocate individual stock picking, but if you spend 3 months researching the best biomed company stock to buy, you may be decreasing your risk of picking a bad one, but you are just as likely to miss out on 3 months of positive market-based returns that you would have gotten had you just picked _any_ company with a positive balance sheet.
- gwbas1c 1y ago"Constraints" is when I finally understood why, when trying to get a startup off the ground, it wasn't going to work. The first (and only) time I tried to make a plan with my co-founder, and there was an obvious constraint, he couldn't work with the constraint. It was at that point that I realized my co-founder just couldn't stop himself from letting his imagination run away. For context, throughout the process of trying to get our startup off the ground, every other week or so, my co-founder would come to me with some kind of idea and just wouldn't take "no" for an answer. I couldn't understand why he just kept pushing beyond reason, until he got into that mode when we had an external constraint around what the idea could be, and he couldn't adapt his ideas to the fundamental constraint that we had to work with. At that point I realized that my co-founder was just letting his imagination run away the entire time: constraints be damned! It became clear that my co-founder couldn't turn his insights into actionable plans.
- CharlieDigital 1y ago> The first (and only) time I tried to make a plan with my co-founder, and there was an obvious constraint, he couldn't work with the constraint. Lots of teams have this problem. The tandem word here is "discipline". Once the constraint is created, then discipline is required to stay within that constraint. Case in point: deadlines. Deadlines are fine. Deadlines without discipline with respect to scope creep is just setting a team up for failure and low quality work.
- gwbas1c 1y agoIt wasn't even a "team." It was just two of us. We simply didn't get far enough, in part because I insisted that we bootstrap until we had a product.
- davidivadavid 1y agoIf you've done any sort of optimization / operations research, you know that most things can (sometimes unhelpfully) be rephrased in terms of an optimization problem. If "success" (whatever that means) is to be seen that way, then (some) successful people probably do both: set constraints to reduce the search space, and chase goals within that space (optimization). You can relax some constraints but then you need to be better at optimizing fast, or willing to accept other goals / winning conditions (get rich by being a criminal).
- Daniel_Van_Zant 1y agoI agree with the author, but I would also say there is something above goals and constraints. Values. A set of things that, when comparing multiple options, make the choice clear. An example of some values I frequently use is "What will give me the most enjoyment the furthest into the future? "What will result in the world being a better place?" "What will make me become someone who resembles Jesus more?" They are different from constraints as they don't knock out any options by default. Instead, they make triaging when there are many different things I could be doing much easier, and circumvent my messy intuition which is based on hormones, hunger, weather, etc. I think values, goals, and constraints are all valuable, but it's a hierarchy. We should create constraints that help us become more aligned with our values. We should create shorter-term goals that make it easy to stay within our constraints. To support both my point and the authors, here is Benjamin Franklin's "Thirteen Virtues," which seem to be a mix of constraints and values (zero goals): https://fs.blog/the-thirteen-virtues/ https://fs.blog/the-thirteen-virtues/
- speed_squared 1y ago> What will make me become someone who resembles Jesus more? Certainly period-correct carpentry tools such as an adze, maul and cubit stick.
- hbarka 1y agoThe adze certainly would not be Jesus period. I think it was more 10,000 BC period.
- IAmBroom 1y ago? Adzes are still in use.
- Daniel_Van_Zant 1y agoAs someone that enjoys carpentry, I don't think I would be entirely upset about this way of taking the question haha.
- 1y ago
- jzox 1y agoThere is a mathematical parallel here. Boundary conditions are essential for solving PDEs and ensuring that the solution is physically relevant and unique. The goal here is “solving the PDE” and the constraints ensure the solution accurately models the physical environment of the problem. Without constraints there can be an infinite number of solutions
- windowshopping 1y agoI'm gonna go out on a limb and say that successful people do all sorts of things in all manner of ways, but that most of them probably don't spend much time reading blog posts on how to be successful.
- Caelus9 1y agoI used to make these long to do lists and chase after big goals. But honestly, most of them never got done. What actually helped me were small limits, like not checking Slack after dinner or opening a new tab only after I finished the task at hand. Sounds weird, but limits gave me more freedom. Less chasing, more doing.
- entontoent 1y agoThis article is full of conflicting implicit beliefs and personal opinions. This is anecdotal folksy wisdom porn.
- hn_throwaway_99 1y agoI feel like I need a button on HN for, as another commenter put it, "folksy wisdom porn", where an article superficially touches all the right buttons to get it to the front page (hey, I always fail to reach my goals, I need a new framework!), but is just anecdotes and shows the results of the author's own Rorschach test. The section on NASA made absolutely no sense to me: > NASA had a fixed budget, fixed timeline, and a goal that bordered on the absurd: land a man on the moon before the decade was out. But what made it possible wasn’t the moonshot goal. It was the sheer range of constraints: weight, heat, vacuum, radio delay, computation. Each constraint forced creative workarounds. Slide rules and paper simulations gave us one of the most improbable technological feats in history. Wut? The constraints are what made it a hard problem, but the only reason they were able to hit this goal in an impossibly short timeline is the huge amount of resources that they put toward a very clear goal (which was, honestly, less "let man explore the heavens" than "beat the Soviets").
- semitones 1y ago"folksy wisdom porn" hits the nail on the head
- newswangerd 1y agoThis is why I love hacker news. I often find myself falling for this stuff and thinking "yeah, that makes a lot of sense". It's always good come back to the comments and get a good old fashioned reality check.
- staunton 1y agoIndeed. For offline use, a good inscribed rock can still go a long way: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/heuristics-that-almost-always-work https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/heuristics-that-almost-alwa...
- virgilp 1y agoThose examples are pretty bad, though. The guard deters thieves by mere presence - just like how an apparently-locked door, even if unlocked, deters more thieves than a wide-open door. The example doctor provides psychological support and real advice when things are _obviously_ wrong. Those are things that are way more useful than a rock (also, in real cases, patients do return after 2 weeks). (the futurist provides no value whatsoever, here we do agree :P) But I feel the entire underlying message is questionable. "Pretty good heuristics" are honestly pretty good! Sometimes (oftentimes, even) it's all you need, and it's much better than doing the extensive research. You should only do the extensive research for the "volcano" scenario, where the consequences are dire - otherwise, you're probably wasting time)
- raintrees 1y agoHaving constraints may also make something more achievable. It helps avoid issues like analysis-paralysis, and helps me focus on the path through the obstacles towards the destination I desire. So for me, still goals, but made more efficient by constraints?
- duxup 1y agoI don't understand what this article is trying to say. Whatever constraints exist certainly shape things, but they're not some success magic ... the fact that they exist at all / in so many success stories isn't significant, constraints exist in life, including with success and failures. I also don't see "goals" and "constraints" as some weird opposite forces or concepts that conflict. Maybe I missed the whole idea here....
- ranprieur 1y agoI like this idea, but my problem is with the word "successful". Setting constraints rather than chasing goals leads to doing interesting things. But there's no guarantee you'll ever be recognized or rewarded.
- __loam 1y agoSpending a paragraph debunking the goals thing them immediately bringing up John Boyd is giving me whiplash.
- waffletower 1y agoYou can also become trapped by your own constraints.
- jimbokun 1y ago> That was the moment I began to question the entire architecture of ambition. Not whether it worked, but whether it asked the right things of a person. Whether a life could be constructed from milestones rather than methods, from outcomes rather than orientation. Just happen to be reading Augustine's Confessions and this is very similar to his struggles in deciding whether to give up his temporal ambitions and become a Christian. He wonders why he's so devoted to pursuing his ambitions for status and accolades, when it doesn't really bring him much joy.
- bobbyd2323 1y agoLots of things are constrained optimization problems.
- wslh 1y agoMeh, we are very used to one constraint: time, and you can see that a lot of very successful people chase goals because they don't have that hard constraint embedded on the daily job. Bell Labs? Xerox Parc? Fermat being a lawyer and "playing" with math? Libcurl? A clear goal includes constraints, the problem is blind goals.
- peter_d_sherman 1y agoThe following is well-written / well-stated: >"Goals are for Games. Constraints are for Worlds. A goal is a win condition. Constraints are the rules of the game. But not all games are worth playing. And some of the most powerful forms of progress emerge from people who stopped trying to win and started building new game boards entirely. [...] Richard Feynman didn’t get his Nobel Prize by pursuing "win a Nobel Prize" as a goal. He played with problems, often placing arbitrary limits on himself: what if we assume this system has no dissipation? What if we ignore spin? He looked for elegance within boundaries, not outcomes. His freedom came from self-imposed structure."
- spintin 1y ago[dead]
- abhaynayar 1y agoLike some other comments, found the article a bit "off" regarding the words and their usage (among other things). But since it does touch a topic that I have thought of a lot, as have many others, leaving my unsolicited advice here. Set a "goal" and then figure out a "daily-habit" that brings you closer to that goal. Then mostly just forget about that goal and execute on that daily-habit. Every now and then, either (1) change the goal - based on your feelings about the daily-habit you are executing, or (2) change the daily-habit - based on whether it is bringing you closer to the goal or not. Repeat. I have been on both ends at different times - obsessing over either the journey or the reward - and like most things - the answer is not neat, it is murky, and in the middle. We like neat boxes so we obsess and ruminate - goals or constraints, identity or actions, work forwards or backwards, promotions or purpose, etc. - I feel all these ruminations are forms of procrastination and pseudo-productivity. While it is good to adjust and calibrate your goals & wants every now and then, I believe that taking action is more important than passive thinking. Also, figuring out what you TRULY want becomes a lot easier after taking a bit of action anyway, instead of being in your own head.
- agcat 1y agoI found the article helpful!
- Nevermark 1y agoThere is nothing wrong with goals. Constraints make setting useful goals easier. Constraints and goals are complementary. But as constraints go: Ikigai is great. [0] With regard to the popular Venn diagram [1], I add: "With who inspires you / Community" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai [1] https://www.japan.go.jp/kizuna/_src/7994686/ikigai_japanese_secret_to_a_joyful_life_pic.png https://www.japan.go.jp/kizuna/_src/7994686/ikigai_japanese_...
- torginus 1y agoJust slept on this article and realized something. There are two wildly popular management methodologies in IT (and probably other places), which can be grouped into constraint-based like agile, scrum, where the focus is not on individual deadlines, but getting a consistent performance out of employees, and goal-based, with project managers and deadlines. I wouldn't exactly say either style is uncontroversially popular, and depends on the needs of the project, with greenfield projects requiring a goal-based approach, and maintenance/feature dev of existing ones leaning more towards agile (there's a lot more of the latter, that's why agile's popular). For what works for you, well that's up to you. I'm a wildly inconsistent person by nature, whether playing to my strengths or covering my weaknesses is a better approach, that's once again not an easy question to answer.
- Klaus_ 1y ago[dead]
- Huxley1 1y agoI used to always set goals for myself, but a lot of the time I’d either burn out or lose focus halfway through. Lately I’ve been trying simple constraints instead, like no phone use in the 20 minutes before bed. These small limits have actually helped me feel more focused and less anxious. Curious if anyone else has tried something similar. How do you balance goals and constraints in your day to day?
- eneveu 1y agoLink no longer works. Article was moved to: https://www.joanwestenberg.com/p/smart-people-don-t-chase-goals-they-create-limits https://www.joanwestenberg.com/p/smart-people-don-t-chase-go...