Inverse goals & why you should set some

opposites

After about 15 years of doing work I liked in environments I didn’t like, I set myself some inverse goals. Inverse goals are the things we desire as a price of entry, as opposed to things we’ll acquire after the work is done. We might even call them unusual requirements for happiness regardless of monetary outcomes:

  • Not to have to shave everyday. (it really hurts my skin).
  • To be able to work when I feel like it, not 9-5 like the 200 year old industrial era said I should.
  • To wear whatever clothes I feel like, and not a uniform designed by someone else.
  • To be able to avoid peak hour traffic.
  • To be mobile and not stuck in the same location day in and day out.
  • To have my worked judged on its merits and not by my political performance.
  • To be able to actually read while working, without people judging this behaviour as flunking off.
  • To let the weather determine whether I work during the day or during the night.
  • To work in environments were I could be myself, and not a clone drone .

I literally tried to do work and be involved in businesses which would allow this kind of lifestyle. I feel like we often get things like this back to front. We aim for some kind of mythical economic success after which we’ll shape our lifestyle. But if we reverse the goals, we can have immediate success by first shaping our existence and then our economics around that. Life best lived, is life by design.

New Book – The Great Fragmentation – out now.