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Goals

What you're aiming at, so services can optimize for where you're going instead of where you've been.

What is it?​

Your aims, written down at every horizon: this quarter's targets, this year's ambitions, the decade-scale direction, and the priorities that rank them when they conflict. Not a vision board. A working document your own agents consult before recommending anything.

Why store it?​

Every service today optimizes for your past behavior, because your past behavior is all it can see. That's why recommendation engines keep you where you've been. A service that can read your goals can serve who you're becoming: the fitness app that knows you're training for something, the finance tool that knows what the saving is for, the learning platform that knows which skill actually matters this year. Goals are the context that turns a service from a mirror into a compass.

What does a service legitimately need?​

The single goal the job serves, at the shallowest useful depth. A running app needs the race and the date, never the reason you're running. A budgeting service needs the savings target, never the life plan behind it. Your curator shares the target; the why stays home.

What never leaves home?​

The ranking and the reasons. Your full goal stack, with its priorities and trade-offs, is the most strategically revealing document you own: anyone holding it knows what you'd sacrifice for what. And the motivations underneath the goals often reach into faith, family, and fear, which live in the keep.

Further Reading​