Kenneth Stanley: Set The Right Objectives

You might like assessment and accountability and objectives and metrics because They make you feel better because it feels like we're making sure that nothing bad will happen, but you have to recognize it's just a security blanket. It doesn't work. Take off the strait jacket, get rid of the security blanket, and just acknowledge how reality works. And it'd be better, I prefer if reality work where if I set an objective like I could just get to it as long as I'm sufficiently determined to do it. You know, that'd be really convenient, but it's just not the way reality works. Welcome to the Knowledge Project Podcast. I'm your host, Shane Parrish.

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Today I'm speaking with Ken Stanley. Ken is the author of Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned. The Myth of the Objective, a book I read and loved, so I reached out and wanted to chat with him. Ken is currently deciding his next adventure, but recently led a research team at OpenAI. In this episode we're gonna take a simple idea and take it seriously.

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