You should make a personal mission statement
This is a 15 minute blog post. I ended up spending most of my time curating the links.
Some weeks ago I was told that I should make a personal mission statement. The idea comes from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey. I have found it quite cutting and an anchor through which I approach everything else in life.
The reflections that informed mine came after a week traveling through Germany. The foreign setting gave me grounds to observe patterns that I’d been carrying—and evidence that I can break them—and a full week away was helpful for reorienting.
I’d encourage you to take a day to reflect and do something like this.
Media that I reviewed when creating my mission statement:
Paul Graham, How to Do Great Work
Sam Altman, How To Be Successful
Eric Jorgenson, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Patrick Collison, Fast
Derek Sivers, There's no speed limit
Nat Friedman, Some things I believe
Aidan Smith, On Doubling
Viskan Veerasamy, Are you serious?
Nan Ranshohoff on General Managers
Paul Graham, How to Lose Time and Money
Viskan Veerasamy, focus your time and energy on what you want to see more of
Anna Salamon, Humans are not automatically strategic
Benjamin Todd, Four values at the heart of effective altruism
[redacted], [redacted] — DM if you want to know which one this is.
Preston Pysh, Diary of a West Point Cadet
Paul Graham, Founder Mode
Elizabeth von Nostrand, Truthseeking is the ground in which other principles grow
Agustín Covarrubias, Kairos Core Values [presentation] — related: CEA’s Team Values.
Paul Graham, Relentlessly Resourceful