Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

At some point, you need to get people to define their purpose. But “Why?” To what end? I ramble on about the purpose of defining a clear purpose.

I tell all of my mentees to define their short-term, middle-term, and long-term ‘purpose’. The goal is to help them succeed and get ahead in their career. If they can define for themselves exactly what they want to accomplish, they can better align their efforts and actions towards achieving it. That’s my thought anyway.

But do people really need a purpose? It’s specially hard to find a purpose if you’re early in your career. And suppose you do figure one out, what do you do, do you even have too many levers to move?What do you do when you have a purpose? Can you change your ‘purpose’? If not, what’s the point of something so inflexible, if yes, what’s the point of a purpose if it’s changing all the time?!

And finally, the most suffocating situations of all, what to do if you define a clear purpose of your existence, but have limited control over your life, and no realistic way to fulfill that purpose?

Let’s start with: Do young people even need a purpose, or is that a pointless exercise?

Maybe professionals in late 20s and early 30s make it better with a purpose, because they understand themselves better and they know what they want. Does it make sense to ask somebody in early-to-mid twwenties to come up with a purpose for their life?

My answer: yes! It helps verbalize and externalize the immediate goals and wants, because on a day-to-day basis your priorities are changing regularly, your projects are changing. Your personal relationships are in motion. With so much confusion and shift, one forgets to anchor themselves in something they care about. Very offten, people don’t follow up on what trully care about, because they forget it among all the distractions of everyday life! But maybe if they really cared about something they’d would remember? Not so! The issue here is not of motivation but of fallibility of human memory and biology, the failure is the technical lack of ability to hold consistent long-term goals.

A clearly defined purpose that one has shared with others is a technology – a spiritual technology – to align oneself into longer term thinking. Framed that way, the question, “Does it matter if you have a purpose if your purpose keeps on changing?” makes more sense. Yes, it does! It makes sense to have a purpose, even if it keeps on changing, because the future direction can be shaped much faster, easier, and clearly if you have a good idea of what direction you were previously headed. This understanding could unlock, maybe, a shortcut to your future direction that hadn’t been previously considered. Or maybe the new purpose can be achieved by only slightly change your trajectory instead of running around all confused towards the new direction.

So yeah, having a clearly-defined purpose does make sense, even if it’s bound to change!

Onto the second issue – if you have very limited control over your day-to-day activities, does having a purpose, or long-term goals make sense, if they don’t align to daily life? Or is it a waste of time and emotional energy, only setting yourself for disappointment and failure?

Nope. It still matters! It’s not a waste of emotional energy, because it anchors you and grounds your everyday actions. If you find yourself at the right place at the right time, you are prepared to pounce on an opportunity, when you know what you want. You are going to be closer to the final destination if you keep reminding yourself where you want to be, even if you don’t eventually end up reaching your final goal. So, yeah, you might not be able to get to the moon, but maybe reminding yourself often that your goal is your purpose to reach the moon will help you. It may help you to be an architect or become a mountain climber, or perhaps an animator or an artist. That is what grounds you and reminds you. Instead of rediscovering the passion over and over after getting distracted, a purpose helps you ground it in the long term. It’s always your friend, even if you otherwise have forgotten it.

But how do define your purpose? Simple answer: you can define your purpose however you want. The easiest way to ask is by asking people what they value in life the most. What is something that you really, really care about and wish to improve, or dedicate yourself to improving or working on? If it’s just for yourself, it’s fine; if it’s to make a lot of money, that’s fine; it’s a purpose. It’s a simple, clear purpose, so probably a lot easier to identify and achieve.

But those example purposes are overly simple, real ones are a lot more thorny. Besides, you can have conflict purposes, if you define more than one. Maybe you want an awesome career that invovles making a million people very happy, but you also want to take care of your family, and be there for your kids. Perhaps your career won’t let you do that, but you still want an awesome career and don’t want to compromise. In that case, you don’t have to make a choice, or you have to find something that combines on both. You can proactively shape the direction of your career by understanding and clarifying your priorities.

Thinking explicitly about things instead of just going off vibes is better because you know how to think about it better.