The business of living

Finding purpose through calculated value prioritization

To live a dedicated deliberate and purposeful life may require contemplating what is important. In fact it may require figuring out what is most important for/to you. Once you know what is most important for/to you then all other considerations can be based around that priority. The hierarchy of priorities is like a pyramid with the most important at the top of it. How do you discover what comes first? You have to know what you want out of your life.

Remember to calculate a purpose you have to figure out what you are most passionate about. What do you want the most from life? If you know that then you can make a calculation from your passion to determine the rank of your values. What you value most in life down to what you value the least.

Setting the goals

Once you have figured out a purpose based on the prioritization hierarchy you can now create a life mission. Around this life mission are the goals which someone must take in pursuit of this life mission. The more ambitious you are the bigger the mission will be. For example if you decide you want to just improve your own life as much as possible this is a very narrow mission and the goals of achieving this are straight forward. This would make sense if at the very top of your prioritization hierarchy is "quality of your life".

On the other hand if you decide you want to do more than just improve your own life but to improve the lives of all humanity? This is a broader and bigger mission. In fact it is so big that to achieve it will require a team. It may also require a lifetime worth of effort from the team or from the many teams.

Every mission is built up of goals. A goal is some desired measurable result. So you must first decide which results matter to the mission and which do not. All results must also be quantifiable. So for example if your goal is merely to improve your own life then you could set a fitness goal. Fitness goals can be quantifiable and measured as "progress". Progress measures the adaptation that the body physically takes over time to continue to meet the demands placed upon it. So strength can be measured, as can endurance, as can size of muscles, tone of muscles, VO2max, HRV, and much more.

But it's the same in social life. If your goal is to be famous then you can measure that by how many unique human followers you have on social media as well as your social reach. What if your goal isn't just to be famous but also to be liked? This again is a self improvement mission but how would you measure how liked or disliked you are at any point in time? Sentiment analysis is the primary means of quantifying how other people feel or think about something. In order to adapt appropriately to be liked you will require constant feedback telling you what they like (or dislike) about you.

What if you want to be perceived as a good person by your peers? To achieve this goal which is also part of a self improvement mission is to first understand that you actually value what other people think of you. This means on your value prioritization hierarchy you would first understand that quality of life being most important to you may require that you have people in your life who respect you. To be respected, to be liked, to be loved, it may require adopting the behaviors which other people admire (perceive as the behaviors of a good person). On the other hand if you don't care what anyone thinks of you and don't want to impress anyone else then you're free to do behaviors which could make you look like a horrible person. It is also possibly the case that you simply put a higher priority on a different value (something else is higher in the hierarchy) and in this case being perceived as evil is less important than something else to you.

Getting 1% better every day

Growth is the key to unlock potential. The idea that every exercise done properly elicits an adaptation. Every goal which requires personal growth will push the individual to self improve enough to accomplish the goal. In other words the individual adapts to the stimulus in the environment and this adaptation directs the growth (potential). To get 1% better every day can apply to anything in life. The 1% number is actually arbitrary. The point is the focus should be on progress every day in the areas necessary to achieve the goals,. mission, and to adapt for the purpose or whatever is most important for you.

So when people ask why is growth important? Without growth then all future potential is 0. Future potential is the result of growth and adaptation. Stress fuels adaptation but not just stress but a particular level and kind of stress. Too much stress for the body and mind to handle and the result is a breakdown. The body will break down if you damage it faster than it can recover and adapt. The mind too will break down if you overwhelm it with stress faster than it can recover and adapt. Both the mind and body are complex adaptive systems which work in a similar way but the difference is that the mind isn't limited to the physical body in the way that the brain is.

The ability to adapt is the key trait in my opinion behind any self improving. We see that with any training it is only broken down into stages. We have the injury stage where just as if wounded the immune system kicks into action. Here we get inflammation (pain) usually because to train anything can be painful. But inflammation exists only as a signal for the body to know where to direct resources so that recovery and adaptation can happen. In other words if we are talking about the mind then introspection even if painful is ultimately just applying the current mental resources toward learning from past situations. To learn and adapt is critical and in order to learn we have to understand how to look at information.

Information could be past events, scenarios, simulations, etc. The point is an individual, business, or body is always growing, adapting, learning, improving, or it is dying. So part of the process of being alive is to identify what our "best life" is. And once we know what that is we can have something at the top of our personal value prioritization hierarchy. From there all of our behaviors have a reason. The reason is based on the vision we have for our own lives (or lack of a vision). The more grand and ambitious the vision is, the more it will take to reach it. To get to the top of Mt Olympus requires developing any of the traits necessary to get to the top. This could be focus, discipline, adaptability/resourcefulness, or any other traits which you believe you can condition yourself to develop.

And by leveraging these traits which you develop you can acquire resources. These resources then can be leveraged to help you accomplish your goals, achieve your mission, and live your best life.