“Begin with the end in mind.” You’ve encountered this notion throughout your life in a variety of ways. It “comes to life” in the reflective exercise that asks you to imagine what will be said about you in the funeral eulogy. It’s put forth when asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It’s asked in interviews as, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” And in many of our schools, it lives in our missions and outcome statements like a “portrait of a graduate.”
This notion is, in many ways, ubiquitous because it’s powerful. Author of The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People is credited with having coined the statement: “begin with the end in mind.” It’s Covey’s second of seven habits critical to self-actualization. Dan and Chip Heath, in their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, phrase it as “point to the destination,” asserting that “change is easier when you know where you’re going and why it’s worth it.”
In education I first encountered this idea, at least in a sustained and systematic way, during two important weeks with the Klingenstein Center’s Summer Institute for Early Career Teachers in 2001 when we studied and worked directly with Grant Wiggins and his, along with Jay McTighe’s, ideas as captured in their book Understanding by Design—determining learning outcomes and then designing a curriculum, comprised of deliberate teaching, learning, and performance assessments that delivers those outcomes—that knowledge and those skills and habits of mind—for students. “Backward design” or beginning with the end in mind is not only a classroom, but also a life no-brainer. And yet, it’s something of which I must always remind myself.
Another way of putting this is Simon Sinek’s way: “Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. By WHY I mean your purpose, cause or belief – WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care?”
And while beginning with the end in mind in our every action is unrealistic and perhaps, at times, undesirable, it’s a notion that our minds should circle and return to regularly. I’ll never forget someone telling me, when I, at the age of 23, got my first dog—that the better trained my dog was, the freer she would be. Robert Frost said it another way: “Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.” Living, teaching, and learning with the end in mind, from the beginning—knowing we have new beginnings every day and moment—makes us freer and more effective as educators and people.
Why begin with why? Because the meaningful why is the end point we seek. In teaching. In learning. In living.