Prioritize Through Purpose

https://belowwaterlevel.com/2024/10/05/prioritize-through-purpose/

by shehjar • 2 years ago

43 21 2 years ago

shehjar2• 2 years ago

Prioritization conflicts are exactly the situations when Product Managers must step away from traditionally accepted management tools and frameworks and look deeper into Purpose.

lo_zamoyski5• 2 years ago

Well, yes, telos is the basis of value and the good. It is the only objective basis for ethics and morality. What is good is always judged in relation to an end which determines the norm. For human beings, the objective telos inherent to human nature is what determines what a good human being is like, and what a good action is, etc.

As a result, our actions are either for the sake of this good as determined by human nature, or deviate from it. Ask what the ultimate end of human beings is and you will begin to put your life in order. A failure to do so means you serve some other end, perhaps one you do not realize you are serving.

gala8y• 2 years ago

A failure to do so means you serve some other end, perhaps one you do not realize you are serving.

What do you mean here?

leansensei• 2 years ago

If you do not serve your own priorities, then you are serving someone else's, and you might not even be aware of what you actually serve.

keiferski4• 2 years ago

The problem with this, and with Aristotle-esque ways of defining “ultimate ends”, is that they are from a world before evolution was understood in any real sense. Because once you realize that “human” is a label describing a point of time in the development of a constantly changing organism, it becomes difficult or impossible to determine exactly what “human nature” is in the first place.

This problem is a more fundamental one and it’s only going to get more complex as genetic engineering, cyborgization, etc. continue to develop. In general I think it’s more fruitful to find purpose in change, even if that means singular fleeting moments, for example, mono no aware in Japanese aesthetics.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-aesthetics/#Mono...

brightball2• 2 years ago

it becomes difficult or impossible to determine exactly what “human nature” is in the first place.

I understand the perspective and the rationale is certainly sound on a long timeline (millions of years), but on the timeline of known human history and civilization "human nature" can be observed and defined much more easily.

Even reading the Old Testament and other very old books that give us a picture into a range of a few thousand years, it becomes clear that human nature has not changed in at least that time period. Because of that, observing human nature within the range of a few millennia is perfectly reasonable.

If evolution turns us into something else, then Human 2.0 Nature will become a thing.

lo_zamoyski5• 2 years ago

Some confusions must be cleared up here.

The first thing to note is that evolution does not necessary contradict telos. The metaphysical position called evolutionism does by definition, but evolution as biological subject matter does not.

Second, the question about the stability or reality of human nature is separate from the question of telos. Even if we suppose that there is no such thing as human nature, we would still need to admit kinds, each with some telos, but more importantly, the very notion of efficient causality already presupposes telos. Without telos, you cannot explain the regularity of the effects of efficient causes. The effects of efficient causes are not arbitrary, or else science would be impossible. And biology, per my observations, is showing signs of slowly moving toward open acknowledgement of telos. The notion of "function" is teleological, after all!

Third, it is odd to speak of human nature changing. For if there is such a thing, then it is predicable, and predicates do not change. You seem to be making a nominalist sort of claim, i.e., the collection of beings, over time, that we have, for whatever reason, classified as "human" do not actually share the same nature. I cannot make heads or tails of nominalism, nobody can, because I cannot determine why the label "human" was used in the first place and why a mislabeling should be regarded as something significant, as something more than a mislabeling. Nominalism renders the word unintelligible. You might say "Oh, well, we have adaptation!", and I would agree, that human beings have adapted and continue to adapt, but the nature of a thing concerns what is essential or substantial about something. Everything else is either a proper consequence of that (speech), or an accidental adaptation or variation (eye color). As a metaphysician would say, intelligent beings on other planets are, ontologically speaking, also human by virtue of their intellects, even if phylogenetically there is a difference. So, the nominalist claim doesn't even rise to the level of being wrong. I claim that there were humans thousands of years ago, and there are human beings today, and because both instantiate the same human nature.

In any case, Etienne Gilson has written a book[0] on this subject. I wouldn't call it a magisterial or exhaustive philosophical work on the subject (others have produced better [1] if you want more heft), but as an introduction to some basic ideas, IIRC, it isn't bad.

[0] https://a.co/d/iugLuek

[1] https://a.co/d/eGMDJ61

shehjar2• 2 years ago

In case theres further interest in reading about Purpose as a way to bring immense motivation and clarity, please see Deep Purpose by Ranjay Gulati(HBS Professor)

android521• 2 years ago

Well, The Goal book which is recommended by Mr Beast perfectly address this issue of prioritization. First, you need to clearly define your goal and then you need to identify and address the biggest bottleneck and all other features/problems must give way to this problem first. After you address the biggest bottleneck, you will find another bottleneck , you repeat the process.

kranner2• 2 years ago

Gabriele Oettingen's WOOP (Wish, Outcome, Obstacles, Plans) technique [1] is pretty much the same thing. Her book on the topic Rethinking Positive Thinking was published in the same year as The Goal book. (I haven't read the latter admittedly)

[1] https://mindfulambition.net/woop/

infecto• 2 years ago

Is it possible that you are off by a few decades? I believe The Goal is 1984 and her book was 2014?

halfcat• 2 years ago

The Goal audio book is included in Spotify premium.

It’s surprisingly well done, in that it’s more like audio theatre with different voice actors, sound effects, and so on, as opposed to a single voice actor doing different characters.

svilen_dobrev• 2 years ago

maybe related (but further into the process of making stuff): impact-vs-backlog

https://web.archive.org/web/20200606231402/https://www.svese...

Prioritize Through Purpose

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