Summary of Kenneth O. Stanley & Joel Lehman's Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The purpose of objectives is to measure our progress towards specific goals set by society or by ourselves. We rarely consider how deeply our culture has come to revere objectives, and how much effort and resources are spent measuring progress towards them.

#2 The weight of objectives on our thinking is so great that it has even impacted the way we talk about animals in nature. We view animals through the lens of survival and reproduction, evolution’s assumed objective. But this can-do philosophy is so optimistic about objectives that it limits our freedom and robs us of the chance for playful discovery.

#3 The problem with objectives is that they take away your freedom to explore creatively and block you from serendipitous discovery. They ignore the value of following a path for its own uniqueness rather than where it may lead.

#4 The pursuit of an objective is not always clear, and it is often accompanied by the need for progress towards the objective to be measured. This is where all the measurements and metrics of our culture come into play.

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Release date

Ebook: 4 June 2022