ENDPOINT TIERS: Tasks, Goals, and Dreams
“Endpoint tiers” is a fundamental concept that does not get the attention it deserves.
This neglect results in many failures, headaches, and misery. You need to understand the quality of your goal to have correct expectations and apply the proper efforts.
Any goal is a desired (i.e., having value for us) endpoint. When we formulate it, we imagine a desired state in the future—that wall in the kitchen is lavender blue, we have a diploma from the University of Helsinki, and the short book we have written changes the attitudes of millions worldwide.
However, a painted wall, a university diploma, and global influence are entirely different, and heaping all these endpoints to treat them the same way is a gross mistake. Also wrong is the advice to pick only five endpoints and focus your life on them or imagine any of them as “the big hairy one.”
Endpoints differ radically.
Not only do they differ in the temporal aspect (e.g., long-term vs. short-term), the complexity of operations one needs to perform to reach the endpoint, and the resources one must have to perform the operations, most importantly, they differ in their uniqueness and the level of uncertainty they imply.
With some endpoints, the uncertainty is so high that the possibility of reaching them can never (sic!) be predicted or measured. Pursuing these endpoints will often be considered unreasonable. However, if we eliminate this set of desired endpoints, we could stop the progress of the human race, as precisely these endpoints serve global progress.
No more charades. All the endpoints belong to three tiers. The bottom one is the task tier. Remember the kitchen wall in pale lavender? This endpoint is clear and measurable and has a transparent process to reach it.
You will need time to prepare, prime, paint, dry, and paint again. You will also need paint of a certain quality and color; one liter of it will go for some 7-10 square meters. Expert painters can provide you with all the details and accurately (up to 15 minutes) estimate the time of reaching the endpoint. At this tier, people often have bosses. {BOSSES AND LEADERS}
Some jobs begin and end at the task tier. Our lavender blue kitchen painting, for example. The kitchen is painted, and the case is closed.
The middle tier is the goal tier. Getting a diploma or a job, learning a foreign language, visiting all countries, and building a family belong there. The endpoints of this tier imply learning along the way. These endpoints also connect to personal resources. Thus, not everyone can achieve any goal.
Let’s emphasize this. Anyone can paint a wall—better or worse, faster or longer—but not everyone can be an engineer, a teacher, or an entrepreneur. Many can be, but not everyone.
Not everyone can learn a foreign language or become an apt wrestler or mountaineer. The endpoints of the goal tier demand more specific resources; some will say they demand aptitude or propensity.
The process of reaching these endpoints is less certain than reaching tasks. Nonetheless, goals are achievable, and the criteria are specifiable. You can state that you know the language if you receive a certificate of a certain knowledge level, are a top mountaineer if you conquered a few 7000-meter peaks, or are an apt athlete if you have won particular competitions. Bosses do not live at this altitude; leaders, particularly mentors, inhabit it.
The last tier, at the top, is the aspiration tier. It is the level of endpoints where measurement is possible but often irrelevant. Achieving that level might happen after a person’s death or not happen at all. Examples might be “writing the next Great American Novel,” “becoming a Hollywood star,” or “finding a cure for cancer.”
Bosses cannot live at this altitude and never inhabit the aspiration tier. Mentors can be of help, but only a person herself can formulate endpoints at this level. Aspiration endpoints are usually extensions of the “Who am I?” question. {WHO AM I?}
This tier can have no exit criteria—your aspiration can be so essential for you that you will try to reach it as long as you exist. The ability to achieve it always implies talent.
Which tier he aims at—aspiration, goals, or task—everyone decides for himself, and this must be a personal decision—not of one’s parents or the Party, or anyone else—the personal one. {MAP YOUR DREAM, KAIROS}
Do group endpoints have the same tiers? They do, but there are differences.
To illustrate them, let’s move from the top to the bottom. Group aspiration tiers are almost always spiritual: a group of believers has an endpoint larger than life. Of course, leaders exist there, as any founder of any religion or cult is a leader leading followers to green pastures. Even in non-religious examples, such as The Narodniks, there are quite a few quasi-religious elements.
The goal and task tiers will be very similar: more uncertainty and specific skills are needed for the goal tier and less for the task. Bosses and leaders can exist on both.
Agreement on the group endpoint is a powerful group unifier.
{ECPM, DELAY, EXPECTANCY, LACK OF MOTIVATION, COHESION, DAILY INCREMENTS}