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You Don’t Need A Goal In Life, You Need A Greater Cause
“What do you do?”, I asked.
“Right now, I travel. I booked a one-way ticket to Bangkok, and I don’t really have a plan”, Dan said.
I poured myself some more coffee. More precisely, I ripped open another packet of instant coffee and added hot water to it.
“I guess I don’t really have a goal in life. I don’t really know what I wanna do”, he added.
We were sitting in a hostel in Bangkok, eating breakfast. I hadn’t known Dan before that day, nor do I assume that I’ll ever see him again or that he’ll read this article. But what he said struck a chord with me.
In the past, when I’ve had goals in life, I haven’t found that they made me happy in any way. At age 9, I had the goal of becoming a soccer pro or a geography professor — which didn’t work out, considering I have two left feet (but am definitely not a lefty) and am not particularly interested in academic work.
Later, I had the goal of graduating high school with a grade good enough to go to a great business school — which I did manage to achieve. I also wanted to graduate in the top 10% of my class, which I managed to achieve too. Then, things started getting crazy. I joined a startup, rose in the ranks to now being de-facto CEO of the core business, and we’ve achieved a…
