
There is life with purpose. And life with no purpose.
There is no time to waste. There is only wasted time.
You wake up and hustle. You wake up and zone out.
You only have productive days. You only have WTF days.
You can always answer why. You turn around and ask “what”?
There is life with purpose. And life with no purpose.
All time management is meaningless without purpose.
If you don’t have something worth working on, there is no point in optimising or improving anything.
Table of Contents
What Is Purpose?
Your purpose is your why.
It is something worth spending your time on.
It is something you will dedicate a large chunk of your life to, and most likely never achieve.
Life without purpose looks like this:
Life with purpose looks like this:
There may be a few detours, but generally things move in the same direction.
It doesn’t matter how productive you are at an everyday, micro-level. If you lack purpose, you are optimising aimlessly for no reason.
In our inner game and mindset, purpose sits at the very top.
How to Find Your Purpose
There are different ways to find your purpose.
The system here is to try all of them. And within the ideas that you come up with, you will discover your purpose.
Method 1: You just know it
Some people just know their purpose.
Whether through inspiration or aspiration, deep down in their soul they just know who they are, what they were put on this Earth to do and why they were put here to do it.
Method 2: Five whys
Pick any of your goals and ask why.
Then ask why again.
And keep asking why until you hit “to change the world” and then take one step back.
It usually takes about five whys.
Method 3: Aggregation
List out everything you want in life.
Material, non-material. Goals, random cravings.
List it all out.
Then take a step back and look at it all.
What is the driving force behind this?
That’s your why.
Method 4: Start With Why
Simon Sinek is best known for his TED Talk on Starting with Why.
His process for discovering purpose is:
- Identify your five biggest stories or standout memories.
- Identify the themes – the gut feeling of “oh that’s me”.
- Draft those themes into a statement in the form, “To X so that Y”.
And that’s your purpose.
Caveats
What is popular is not your purpose.
The opinions of others don’t matter here. F*ck what others think.
Your purpose is yours and yours alone.
You don’t have to share it.1Though it can be beneficial to.
It doesn’t have to fit nicely with what others want or expect of you, even if they are your family or friends.2I’m looking at all you Asian and Indian people here.
Weaponising Your Purpose – How to Use Your Purpose and Actually Live It
Once you know your purpose, you want to spend as much time on it as possible.
That’s the true secret behind productivity and time management.3The rest is just rationalisations and BS.
How do you do this?
You have 168 hours every week. You sleep 56 of those. What do you do with the remaining 112 hours?
Most people define themselves by what they consume – their brands, their Instagram, their possessions, their celebrity fandom.
Those are other people’s purposes – not yours.
People with a strong sense of purpose define themselves by what they produce. They were put on this planet to bring their purpose into reality.
You can do this by aligning the arrows in your life towards your purpose.
Once you know what your purpose is, make everything in your life about your purpose.
Start by writing it out daily until you have your purpose burned into memory.
Then optimise all the productivity, time management and other stacks in your life for your purpose.
Use your purpose as your reason for why you do things, for making decisions, for how you do things, for energising you… for everything.
What Is Your Purpose Aaron?
To evolve to the highest level that I can, and help others do the same.
I do this by teaching people about purpose, hedonism and flow.
What To Do Next
Work out your purpose.
Align your life towards your purpose.
And then spend as much time on your purpose as possible.
That’s the biggest time management secret.
- Though it can be beneficial to.
- I’m looking at all you Asian and Indian people here.
- The rest is just rationalisations and BS.
Photo by Nuno Antunes.