A purpose finding exercise

Part 1: Exploration-Exploitation
Part 2: Bargaining Trade-offs to your brain.
Part 2a: Empirical time management
Part 3: The time that you have
Part 3a: A purpose finding exercise
Part 4: What does that look like in practice?
Part 4a: Lost purposes – Doing what’s easy or what’s important
Part 4b.1 In support of yak shaving
Part 4b.2 Yak shaving 2
Part 4c Filter on the way in, Filter on the way out…
Part 4d.1 Scientific method
Part 4d.2 Quantified self
Part 5: Call to action


I had a friend confused and come to me asking for suggestions on how to find her purpose.  I love these questions because it’s a journey I have also been on.  There is no solid answer to that but there are often clues.  Here is an exercise that helps:

0: sit down with pen and paper and remove distractions for 30mins.

  1. make a list of your biggest accomplishments over the past 5 years.
  2. make a list of other achievements that you have seen other people achieve that you liked in the past 5 years.
    1. If this seems hard; make a list of people who you like, and write out some of the things that those people achieved that you cared about or that matter to you or mattered to them.
  3. decide which ones you are interested in for the future, or similar things for the future.
  4. Make a list of idea of which of those to pursue for the future.
  5. Make a list (or several) of how to go about doing those things, then start implementing!  for example – putting reminders in your diary, doing research and generally doing the things you want to do!

Q: I’m stuck?

Great! contact me for help!


Meta: Thank you Anna for the request, now I hope that more people can benefit from this exercise.

Meta: this took 30mins to write.


Part 1: Exploration-Exploitation
Part 2: Bargaining Trade-offs to your brain.
Part 2a: Empirical time management
Part 3: The time that you have
Part 3a: A purpose finding exercise
Part 4: What does that look like in practice?
Part 4a: Lost purposes – Doing what’s easy or what’s important
Part 4b.1 In support of yak shaving
Part 4b.2 Yak shaving 2
Part 4c Filter on the way in, Filter on the way out…
Part 4d.1 Scientific method
Part 4d.2 Quantified self
Part 5: Call to action

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