1. I will try to streamline my life as much as possible.
2. I will wear a red shirt and black pants every day.
3. I will go to IHOP every Sunday.
4. I will eat chocolate.
5. I will listen to drum and bass while working.
6. I will remember birthdays.
7. I will try to maximize my pleasure.
8. I will remember that nothing matters.
9. I will focus my mental energies on becoming a better writer.
10. I will make lame jokes.
11. I will listen.
12. I will care.
13. I will learn.
14. I will find the beauty in the world.
15. I will commune with my wonderful GTD brothers and sisters.

I will spend inordinate amounts of time, despite the fact that I have an awesome array of gadgets and applications, obsessing over those gadgets, computers, and softwares which I don't have. I will spend 10 times more time "tweaking my system" (GTD) than actually implementing it. I will seek every opportunity possible to escape whatever it is I'm doing to play with my laptop.

That's pretty depressing. :)

I have adopted the Google philosophy:

Kind of sums up everything for me.

Michael

So does that mean you _want_ not to be evil, or that your past supports a demonstrated mission of "not evilness?"

See, I'm curious about *real world* Mission Statements, not that speculative stuff they teach people in seminars at the Ramada Inn.

Because I'm thinking that for a lot of us it involves Cheese Doodles, American Idol, and leaving work early on Fridays.

Come on, you guys, really 'fess up!

I look at any actions that I take in the light of 'will [action] be detrimental to anyone'. If so, I think about [action] and try to alter it in such a way that it is not (so) detrimental to someone.

I let my faith and values guide me through the everyday stuff of working in IT for a small city, and raising my 3yr old [and now my newborn coming Thursday 3/30/06] to be good people.

I know that is still not what you are looking for, but it is the way that I (try) to live my life. In fact, yours (Merlin) is not so much a statement of Mission but rather a statement of your life.

You want:

Michael

I will shave the living hell out of any yak in sight, stopping only to buy newer razors as Gillette produces them.

I will lament the litany of shit I have to do and then sit at the bagel shop reading board.43folders, checking email, and refreshing endo. I will come up with ideas and ambitions that will sit in my S/M (that's someday/maybe people!) or Projects list and taunt me with my own pathetic lack of ambition. I will wait until the last week of the semester to write four papers, prepare two presentations, and study for a final, all of which I have known about all semester, and I will stay up for days on end to get it all done. Then I will bitch about not getting any sleep, treat my wife like shit, and not help around the house until I get it all done. Above all else, I will do as little as I can for as long as I can without people bitching at me.

I will distract myself from the mainstream of life by buying comic books, eating junk food, daydreaming, eschewing commitments to people/ideas/hobbies, twiddling registry settings/autoexec.bat/firefox to achieve minimal gains in actual productivity (and which I'll have to do all over again with the next OS upgrade) and in general getting flabbier physically, emotionally, mentally, and morally, all the while accepting that feeling blue and glum are just part of being "me."

I will occasionally wake myself out of the doldrums to focus on my work, to exercise, to diet, to be resolved, but will always comfortably lapse back into a velocity-free complacency.

One of the classic mission-generating tools is writing your own obit. Friends, that's my obit, right there.