 Bobby is really interested in Maggie, and decides he will offer to take her out to lunch so he can get to know her better. To make this possible, he goes into his mother's purse and takes enough money to impress even the prettiest girl in the class. Do the ends justify the means? Is it right if he accomplishes what he wanted to do to impress his pretty classmate as someone who is willing and able to do this? Performance engineering has an answer, and it is the black box. He has a valued result to gain, and that is to get his young classmate's attention focused on him. He has his personal time and effort to put toward this purpose. With performance thinking, we put the rest of the event into the black box, and it is no longer of concern. The simple answer to the justification question is that performance thinking never justifies a process. Performance is based on costs and result. The process is always a choice of the one who decides what to do. The more important performance question is whether Maggie wants to know someone who is willing to be a thief just to impress her. It is perhaps fat flattering. It is also likely to be a turnoff for getting any closer to him. The harder question, the one that defines performance thinking, is a closer understanding of a valued result. What will result from spending a little one-on-one time with Maggie? Will it really be valuable, or is it just a process that Bobby would take to accomplish something else? As a rule, if what you do is more important than what you accomplish, you will not be able to accomplish much of anything. Education including gathering knowledge and learning things to do is valuable only in increasing your potentials for success. It is not education that has value, it is you who become more valuable because you are educated. Education is a process. Put that process inside the black box and lock it away and out of sight. What matters is the time and effort you must put in to receive the benefit of education and the impact that this education will have on your future and what you will then be able to accomplish. As a teenager, you are in a time of change. You are learning to become more effective in what you do even as you grow and change into that person who can assume more and more control over your own destiny. You will be the one deciding what to do based on your own sense of what will eventually have value. As a teenager you lack experience, but are offered the experience of many others who have already grown into mature adults and who have experienced many decades of adult life. Education is an investment you make in your future. You can't see the valuable results clearly because your sense of value is growing and changing, but there is still investment. There is still your time and effort that you commit to the educational process because of your own expectation of receiving and increased ability to do things as an adult. Almost everyone gains potency by education. It has worked for a wide range of other people is almost certain to work for you as well. Even here there is performance approach, lack educational process in the box. It is not the educational process that determines what you gain, but your decisions on what you do to gain it. You were fed education as a younger child, but now find yourself with some choices on how much time and effort you commit and what you do to receive what education provides. When you were kids, your family made the investment for you, committing your time and effort to an educational process that they had available to them for just this purpose. This is changing as you grow and mature. Your performance value is increasingly affected by the choices you make. What you receive will not just be based on lessons, class participation or even listening to teachers, these are just processes. Yes, they have given value and they should be respected as such, but the choice of how to get the most still rests with you and your choices will become more and more a part of your education as you continue this wonderful investment. What value will define performance for you? Your choice to seek new value will always be your personal decision and you must be the one who has something to accomplish. Nobody else gets to decide this for you. Looking for what has value is a discipline and it is not simply reaction to an immediate want or need, it goes to who you are and to your envisionment as a future that may or may not result from your actions and the impact you expect to result from your commitment of your time and effort.