I was reviewing some goals that I had set out for myself. These were work goals as well as personal ones. I wanted to see if I was working on things that really matter. So I asked myself these questions:
Why am I doing this?
How do I accomplish this?
Is this from analogy or from first principles?
What does success look like?
These are pretty standard questions. They’re usually set out in a project page. However… there’s one key thing that these questions fail to answer… Is it even worth doing?
What happens if I don’t do this?
This question above, has helped me prune a lot of the goals. Those goals… when reasoning from first principles - didn’t really matter. Understanding the impact of not doing something, highlights the need (or lack thereof) to actually do the thing you set to accomplish.
With this one question - I assess the impact of even doing it in the first place. If there is not a strong enough case of completing something, is it even worth doing? Probably not.