It’s easier to put a puzzle together when you know what it’s supposed to look like.
This applies to everything that requires skill — communicating, designing, cooking, leading, etc.
If it’s true that most of us are non-player characters (NPCs), this might be why. An inability to start with the end in mind makes you aimless, corrupts your agency. It causes you to fall for traps you’ve seen others walk into. It means you can’t shift perspectives when needed.
Starting with the end in mind helps you break decision-making into more realistic, lower-risk chunks. With the end in mind, you can check your work as you go. You don’t have to see the entire path so long as you can roughly define the destination.
More practically, starting with the end in mind could be thought of as “State an objective with its intended outcome.” Start small. With an “end” that’s not far away. What do you want to accomplish this hour? Whatever it is, opening TikTok probably isn’t step one.
Now, think medium-term. For example, “I want to run a 5k” does not carry the weight of, “Several people in my family have suffered and died because of heart disease, and training to run a 5k would be a constructive first step toward improving my cardio.” The real goal isn’t running a 5k (a checkbox), it’s a healthier life (lasting change).
And the “end” can also apply to the end of your life. A core, oft-repeated piece of homework from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is to draft your ideal obituary. Or perhaps imagine yourself as a ghost at your funeral. Who showed up? What did you accomplish? What mattered when you were on your deathbed? Whatever the answers, you need to start working toward those things today.
Starting with the end in mind strengthens discipline. It turns ideas into intent, and intent into reality.
There are many versions of starting with the end in mind:
- Reverse engineering
- Working backwards
- Standing in their shoes
- Following the golden rule
Starting with the end in mind is also a helpful approach to knowledge work. “Working backwards” is an approach made recently popular by Amazon. Teams are expected to write press releases for products before building anything. If the press release isn’t compelling, then the product isn’t ready or not worthwhile. The same goes for meetings. Amazon uses succinct pre-read memos to ensure clarity up front. Which for the writer, of course, would require starting with the end in mind.
“It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busyness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall.”
~Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Book)
“It’s as if I had been going downhill when I thought I was going uphill. That’s how it was. In society’s opinion I was heading uphill, but in equal measure life was slipping away from me.”
~Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych (Book)
