goal recrafting

James -

I started using Complice six months ago now. Coincidentally, that was right after I glimpsed down below "values" to formulate my deep goals of relational being-ness (and wholeness, coherence, integrity - words are approximate). That made for a great set of high-level Complice goals for me to explore relational awareness and intentionality:

  1. biggest self
  2. nourishing relationships
  3. better society
  4. healthy family

Relating to myself, relating to others (with friends and family broken out for independent consideration), and relating to the whole/system. It's like they are categories of expression for the one underlying goal. Ugh, there's something so darn ineffable about that state/place/vision - it sounds rather mystical/spiritual to try, but that mysticality also seems like just a flatland projection of something that's not itself imprecise or fuzzy, it just exists in an extra dimension for which we don't have shared models or vocabulary.

[Integrated? What about that as a pointer to wholeness, unification, bigness, coherence. It winks to the nouns of integral (philosophy) and integrity (morality). It represents the end state of a process of travelling from a dis-integrated state to a re-assembled wholeness. Not bad. <sets aside>]

Anyway, back to these goal categories. I am definitely still vibing with those relational spaces. Yes and... I see that some activity streams can muddle a space or detract from the relational side. Here's what I'm coming up with as my next iteration:

  1. self-inquiry
  2. family
  3. friendships
  4. community
  5. learning
  6. building intentional society

The first four are the relational rings, same as before. The latter two are activity streams:

Learning

Consumption activities like watching Stoa sessions and reading non-fiction have been a bit homeless so far. Doing these as tasks is "for" me mostly, but the focus of my "self" goal is towards contemplative practice. This lets me consider learning as a swim-lane for time-utilization.

Community v Building Intentional Society

My existing "better society" goal has been 95%+ directly towards Intentional Society - sensing, refining, workshopping, iterating, launching, building. Now that it's in motion, there's only going to be more operational execution ongoing there. But I'd like to create space to ask myself "how am I relating to community (and wider society)?" independently of IS - which isn't the only community I'm involved in, either. The distinction between "me in community" and "me building community" sounds like a succinct way to put it.

Is it weird that I now have two different types of goals? Hum, do they map to the "governance and operations" of Sociocracy/Holocracy? Well, not quite - the being-ness goals aren't really "meta-goals". They are not traditional or SMART, but they are still object-level w/r/t goal-ness. What about "being v doing" for the two types? The new two are more doing-y... except all of the tasks are "doing" even for the being-ness goals. Wait, "instrumental and terminal" might be closest! The depth of the being-ness goals positions them as fairly terminal objectives, while "learning" and "building" both fit with an "in order to..." instrumentality.

Or even if it is weird or inelegant to have two types, whatever they are - so what. "Very well then I contradict myself." While I'm at it, let's add a goal zero for meta/organizational tasks. Fire that up and see how it runs. There is no absolutist right or good, only enjoyable usefulness.