“Find your purpose” is one of those phrases that makes you feel worse for not having done it already. It sounds like a single grand answer everyone else got in the post and you missed. There is no single answer, and chasing one is why the question feels crushing. So forget purpose. Answer these instead, quickly, badly, without overthinking. Direction leaks out of small honest answers, not big philosophical ones.
The questions
Write the first thing that comes, not the impressive thing.
1. What did you love doing at ten, before anyone told you it was pointless?
2. What do people come to you for?
3. What could you talk about for an hour with no notes?
4. What makes you lose track of time?
5. What injustice actually makes you angry, not just annoyed?
6. Whose life makes you quietly jealous, and which specific part?
7. What would you do this year if you knew nobody would judge it?
8. What is the problem you keep finding yourself trying to solve?
9. What did last month give nothing back for?
10. When did you last feel like yourself, and what were you doing?
11. What do you keep starting and not finishing, and why does it keep pulling you back?
12. If money were handled, what would you still want to do with your days?
13. What would ten-years-older you thank you for starting now?
14. What is the smallest version of a thing you keep saying you want?
15. What would you do this week if you stopped waiting to feel ready?
What to do with the answers
Do not look for a lightning bolt. Look for a direction, a warm-ish way. Notice the words that repeat, the things that showed up in three different answers. That is a thread, not a destiny, and a thread is enough. You do not need the whole map. You need the next honest step in the direction those answers keep pointing.
Purpose is built, not found
The word “find” is the lie in the whole thing. It implies purpose is a lost object sitting somewhere, waiting. It is not found. It is built, out of the small experiments you run when you follow the threads these questions expose. You will not think your way to it. You will waddle your way to it, one tested step at a time.
What the Duck Am I Doing With My Life?
When you cannot remember which way is up.
Read the book page → Get on Amazon →