Values versus Goals
For most of his career, Nathan has studied possibility in terms of radical outcomes, such as SpaceX creating reusable rockets. He has championed innovators like Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, believing their accomplishments worthy of study and imitation. But after hundreds of interviews with remarkable individuals who have received very little recognition, Nathan has begun to doubt this view. While it would be easy to promise that the tools in this book guarantee outsize success (something many books do), that might actually be counterproductive. By focusing on external metrics like fame and money, we would be exposing you even more to the downsides of uncertainty—the anxiety and pressure of trying to achieve a specific outcome over which you have limited control. In contrast, if we encourage you to focus on something over which you do have control—your values rather than your goals—then we could nurture your ability to face uncertainty by making you failure-proof!
Focusing on values rather than goals can feel counterintuitive for those of us steeped in the Western dogma of self-actualization. While we aren’t arguing that all goals are inherently bad, so often our explicit or implicit goals are tied to arbitrary success outcomes like money and recognition. To illustrate their arbitrary nature, consider those who achieved objectively great things but received little recognition during their lifetimes: Ada Lovelace laid the foundations of modern computing but remains relatively unknown, Vincent van Gogh sold one painting during a lifetime of constant rejection, and Nikola Tesla invented the wireless communications underpinning your social network but died penniless. (Tesla’s name would be largely unknown but for the car company named after his electric engine.) And how many others made significant steps forward only to have been completely forgotten? Some unknown Roman—or Romans?—invented stronger concrete two thousand years ago than we can make today, and unlike our modern concrete, it grows more durable in seawater.
What about individuals who don’t do anything “noteworthy” for the masses but make a difference in their immediate circle? Every person reading this book is doing so because a teacher, likely paid an abysmal wage, taught them how to read, opening up a whole world of possibility. Others may point to a peer, leader, coach, or mentor who changed the way they saw the world. What about parents who receive almost no recognition for the sacrifices they make but enable their children to reach new heights through mundane and exhausting efforts? It is all these daily and repetitive acts added up that make the world go round, not the “great” heroes on which chance has shone the spotlight.
Add to this that the spotlight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Robert Waldinger is the director of the most robust research on happiness, the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has followed more than seven hundred people, from across social classes, for over eighty years. Although 80 percent of young people list becoming rich as a life goal and 50 percent list becoming famous, Waldinger observes “the lessons [of the research] aren’t about wealth or fame or working harder and harder. The clearest message that we get from this seventy-five-year study is this: good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.”1 He goes on to explain that wealth and fame, as much as conflict and loneliness, actually lead to declines in cognitive, emotional, and physical health, whereas loving, connected, supportive relationships improve happiness, health, and memory and even buffer disappointment. As corroborating evidence, Karl Pillemer, sociologist and gerontologist at Cornell University, interviewed one thousand elderly Americans and reported that “no one—not a single person out of a thousand—said that to be happy you should try to work as hard as you can to make money to buy the things that you want. No one—not a single person—said it’s important to be at least as wealthy as the people around you, and if you have more than they do it’s real success. No one—not a single person—said you should choose your work based on your desired future earning power.”2
Alain de Botton, philosopher and founder of the School of Life, argues that this problem starts with the “beautiful but dangerous” idea that anyone can achieve anything. In his own words, “If you really believe in a world where you believe you can do anything, and you only have done a bit, my goodness, how crushed you will feel. The possibilities for humiliation are so much greater now…. Leading a good life isn’t good enough; you need to be extraordinary, become Mark Zuckerberg, become somebody else. This is the kind of torture we have imposed on ourselves.”3 De Botton concludes, “How have we made a life where the statistical odds … the 99 percent surety that you will lead [an ordinary life] … has come to seem like a humiliation and the wrong sort of life? This is setting yourself up for disaster.”
What would happen if everyone, from executives in large companies and startups to schoolteachers and garbage collectors, thought about value more broadly? Would we be more satisfied with the tasks we are doing? Would we take more risks? Would we celebrate and value the thankless jobs spontaneously, seeing them for how they enable us? None of this is easy. Nathan has struggled with this relevance ladder his entire career, always wanting his work to have greater reach, be more impactful, and be better known. In reality, this outcome-based “success” lasts for a brief season even when it comes. One of PayPal’s founders, who made hundreds of millions from the company, famously slept under his desk in his next startup because he worked so many hours, wanting the venture to be bigger than PayPal. Was it? No. Even if it had been, would that have been enough to satisfy him? Most likely not. And what happens when you have sacrificed everything to the project’s success and it isn’t a success?
By now you know we admire David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails and Basecamp, but what we love more than his startups is his perspective on work. He rejects the view that we need to sacrifice everything to achieve a goal. “I’ve been working on internet startups, companies, apps for the last twenty years and have done so in a way that it never consumed my life.”4 Heinemeier Hansson is brash when dismissing outcome-based goals when you are facing uncertainty: “First of all, goals are bullshit. Second, they are oppressive. Third, [they don’t] even work. Whether you meet $10 million or not does not happen because you set that as a goal.” He argues that focusing on goals only creates the illusion of control—while also increasing anxiety and the likelihood that we make trade-offs about the things we care most about.
By contrast, if we pursue a project based on our values, rather than on goals, we are better able to face uncertainty and our future outcomes will be more satisfying because we can achieve that value—we can succeed, no matter what happens to the project. Heinemeier Hansson explains that when he selects a new startup project, he focuses on values like learning from the experience, writing good software, treating his employees well, and acting ethically in his interactions with the market. He explains, “I would rather set my approach up so that [I’m thinking about] ‘OK, did the market like it or not?’ Do you know what? If they didn’t, I will still look back on the path—the two years and millions of dollars we spent developing this thing—and feel great about it.” By focusing on what he can control, Hansson creates a world where he cannot fail. “That is the way to deal with the fact that putting something into the world can be an inherently frightening, disconcerting, disappointing thing to do,” he says.
The irony is that extraordinary outcomes often come to those who are doing their work based on values, or the “why.” A growing body of empirical research underscores the importance of knowing the purpose behind a task. In a study of call center employees raising money for student scholarships, when employees spent just five minutes talking to a student who had benefited from a scholarship, they spent twice as much time on the phone and raised almost three times as much money.5 Similarly, in a study of volunteer lifeguards, those who were told stories about saving a life volunteered 40 percent more hours than volunteers who read stories about the personal benefits of being a lifeguard.6
Likewise, when founders and entrepreneurs are motivated by a personal “why,” success often follows. Entrepreneur David Hieatt explains:
Most brands think they have a sales problem. What they actually have is a culture problem in disguise. Their brand to the outside world looks the part. But on the inside, it’s empty. The folks on the inside don’t feel it. And so, therefore, the customers don’t feel it either…. As an entrepreneur, your job is to attach meaning to the time [employees and customers] give you. The brands we love working for change things. And, as it turns out, change is something we are happy to give our time to…. Stress is doing something you don’t care about with time that you do.7
The benefits of believing in the work you do are even more noticeable in the lives of educators, artists, and makers who choose careers based on values from the outset. Before we started writing this book, we felt an intense craving to find people living and working from their integrity. We felt discouraged by seeing teenagers trapped by the dogma of passion—the stressful idea that if they could find the one thing they cared about and sacrificed everything to it, they would be the next Steve Jobs. We could see both the anxiety it created and the fallacy it imposed. We were searching for people doing work in earnest ways (wholehearted, authentic, diligent, passionate, and mindful). The project took us to a literary festival in Liverpool; a walking tour through England’s Lake District; bakeries and restaurants in Paris; the magical world of a tapestry weaver and toy maker in Tuscany; a silversmith, a goldsmith, and basket makers in the UK; a Mexican restaurant with a poet and photographer/philosopher in San Antonio, Texas; a city planner in Melbourne; and an EMT/film producer/writer in Sydney. We met enough people working in this earnest way to convince us of its possibility for all of us. When we work at anything for the sake of doing it well, according to our values, it produces enduring distinction and greatness no matter how mundane or underrated the work is in the public’s fickle eye.
Although we may live in a world that sings the praises of a winner-take-all mindset, the heroes in our stories, and in our lives, don’t take it all for themselves. That’s what villains do. Instead, heroes create opportunities not just for themselves but for others as well. In closing, we like the way one of our “earnest” friends, Palestinian American poet Naomi Shihab Nye, turns the traditional notion of fame on its head. In her poem “Famous” she writes, “I want to be famous to shuffling men / who smile while crossing streets, / sticky children in grocery lines, / famous as the one who smiled back. / I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, / or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, / but because it never forgot what it could do.”8 The “fame” that Nye is reminding us of is a purer version of distinction available to us all.
Reflection and Practice
When you face uncertainty based on your values, not arbitrary goals, you can’t fail. That will put you at ease to do your best work. As a bonus, your values will lead you to the uncertainty that’s worth taking on, and your outcomes will ultimately be more satisfying, and maybe even more successful, because they are being fueled by your “why.” Here are some ways to think through your values.
- Revisit your uncertainty manifesto. Remember the Uncertainty Manifesto tool from chapter 9? If you have yet to create your own statement, now is a good time to define your values and philosophy.
- Write a letter. Jump-start a values mindset by writing a letter or email to someone who inspired you. Remind them, or let them know for the first time, how their care or attention changed you.
- Define fame. Make a list of ways that you are already “famous” in the vein Nye describes or in ways that you would like to be famous—the quickest to forgive, the most considerate officemate, the most empathic boss, the most thoughtful gift-giver, the one with the dauntless glass-half-full perspective, etc.
- Focus on “must.” Elle Luna, a former designer at IDEO, has written and spoken widely about the difference between “should” and “must.” Where musts are the things connected to your real values, shoulds are the layers of things that are just a part of life. Luna suggests that when making a decision, you label a chair for each category. Sit in each, writing down the list of things that fit under that category—the shoulds and musts of the decision. Anything that feels congruent with the “must” chair becomes a compass for guiding your project forward.9
- Imagine your audience. When working toward a deadline or project, remind yourself often of the personal values that will infuse it with purpose. When we write to an imagined audience of today’s unrecognized van Goghs, Teslas, Lovelaces, or other unsung heroes to encourage them in pursuing their earnest work, we more authentically tell the upside of uncertainty. Helping to activate and unlock readers so they can face uncertainty fully and courageously is why we are writing this book.