Is your mental framework geared toward living a good life?

I recently listened to a podcast with philosopher Kieran Setiya that presented telic and atelic verbs and activities. Telicity is a property of a verb indicating that the action has a clear endpoint or goal. You can think of the difference between having kids and parenting or graduating and studying.

Let's take the latter example:

"Graduating" implies a goal: in this case, a university curriculum with set requirements and checkpoints.
"Studying" is an activity without a specific goal, done just for its intrinsic value.

There is an enormous difference depending on which one you focus predominantly on.

If your primary focus is on graduating, you are devaluing the time spent studying and setting your reference frame on a "success/failure" end state. Furthermore, when the goal is achieved, the satisfaction of reaching graduation quickly disappears, and you are soon left with the next goal to work towards.

Let's flip the script: if your primary focus is instead studying, there is intrinsic satisfaction and value in engaging with the activity. Every day you can engage in the craft of studying and get value and satisfaction from it. You'll never achieve completion in studying, so that activity implicitly generates a constant stream of rewards. Of course, you could still achieve goals along the way and graduate.

The difference between the two frames of reference is stark.

Entrepreneurship is too biased for the telic reference frame and leads to a negative cognitive paradigm for founders. Focusing on the process of engaging in activities that are self-rewarding will foster great companies and cultures. The goals will be easier to achieve, and founders can keep the momentum for long.

There is an enormous difference if you are working to achieve an exit or if you are working because the activity is intrinsically meaningful to you.