The most important parameter of a creative life is a Worthy Goal. What it is? Here are some basic criteria for a Worthy Goal:
1. The goal must be new or not achieved. Or the means to achieve the goal must be new.
2. The goal must necessarily be socially useful, positive, aimed at the development of life. Or: the positive results of achieving the goal should be global, and the negative ones — if they are nevertheless inevitable — local.
3. The goal must be specific: not general good intentions, but a clearly defined task, the solution of which can be started even today.
4. At the same time, the goal should not be too narrow: it is necessary to clearly see the supersystem — the next stages of work. A specific goal must necessarily have access to global problems, the Great Worthy Goal must be unattainable, endless. How to combine these two seemingly opposite requirements: concreteness and unattainability? Each set goal must be specific and quite achievable, but the number of suprasystemic transitions is infinite, and therefore there can be no final, final goal. Thus, unattainability is a requirement for a system of worthy goals rather than a single goal.
5. The chosen goal can be called the equivalent of your own life. Therefore, the scale, significance of the expected results characterizes the “price” at which a person evaluates himself: after all, the time of his own life is spent on achieving the goal. Hence the importance of this quality — the scale of the goal — for a person: the time of our life is limited, which means that the number of goals that we can achieve is also limited. You have to choose, and for this you need a reliable criterion so as not to waste your whole life on achieving trifles. Let the necessary, but still trifles.
6. A new worthy goal, as a rule, is ahead of its time so much that it is often perceived by others as heretical. A worthy goal or results obtained must necessarily seem heretical. This requirement at first glance seems strange and unreasonable. But the degree of «hereticity» (so to speak) determines the distance from the generally accepted level of views, the culture of knowledge to the goal set, to the level of the results obtained. If the goal or the results obtained are not perceived as heresy, this is an indicator that something is “wrong”: that a small or not new goal has been chosen, that the results achieved are not revolutionary. «Heretical», however, although it is a property of a worthy goal, characterizes not the goal itself, but the typical attitude of others towards the revolutionary idea. Time will pass and perception will change. But until the goal has become mass, and the results are generally accepted, both the goal and the results are considered heresy.
7. That is why, when a worthy goal is achieved, as a rule, there is no competition. This ensures good quality work: no haste, no hack work.
8. A worthy goal is the personal goal of a person or a small team, a group of associates. Large groups appear later, when the main directions of search have been explored, when the advance itself is no longer associated with the former mortal risk.
9. A worthy goal should be independent of complex expensive scarce equipment that only large development teams can have. Revolutionary goals begin to develop alone, so you have to rely only on yourself. Independence from complex equipment, from large funds — this is the way to conduct development under any circumstances; a way to remove obstacles that hinder progress towards the goal.
10. And the last. This requirement is not supported by objective factors, and I cannot even convincingly prove its necessity by any arguments; here you have to resort to the wording «I’m sure.» So, I am sure that when choosing a worthy goal, one must strive to ensure that the goal is clearly beyond one’s strength, so that it obviously exceeds the capabilities and abilities of the person who undertakes it. This does not mean that the goal will remain unachieved: everything is available to a person. But the achievement of such a goal is a dispute between a person and himself. The toughest battle a man must win. And win by doing the «almost impossible». The greater the victory. Achieving such “unbearable” goals is a contribution to the treasury of mankind’s landmarks: it is difficult to say what is more valuable — the directly obtained results or the very fact that a person was not afraid, did not retreat …