I've just published the first in a series of Q & A's with TOC expert Alan Barnard on the TocThinkers.com blog.
This bit caught my attention:
During our first meeting [Eli Goldratt] asked me a simple but quite profound question – what was my goal in life?
Turns out that none of the goals I had set for myself at the time (e.g. to own my own company by age 30 etc) matched his definition of what a “Goal in Life is” – he told me a “Goal” is something that once you achieve it, you are ready to die…! Well, at only 24 years old, I could not imagine I would be “ready to die” ever but it really made me think. I soon realized that according to Eli’s definition (at least for me), a “Goal” could never be a destination, but it had to define a journey, and since there was always a chance that you could die at any moment, had to be verbalized in a way that you can achieve your goal every day (or at least know whether your actions that day took you closer or further away from your goal).
In the same spirit as Eli’s goal (“Teaching the world how to think”), I verbalized my own goal as – “Teaching the world (and myself) how to see and unlock inherent potential…”
...
It got me thinking ... what is my goal in life?
At the moment I would say that my goal in life is to "Teach the people in the software development world how to make their world a happier place."
I hope that doesn't sound too "up my own arse", as my Irish friends would put it.
-oOo-
What is your goal in life, my friend?
