Posted on 29th of June, 2019

I have been thinking about this topic for quite a while now. Over the last few months, I am finding myself in more and more conversations with people that are trying to figure out what it is that they should be doing. In essence, they are searching for their purpose.

And I have been in the same spot. I still am. Ever since I realized that there is more to life than a 9-to-5 job that you despise – something which when I was in high school was my view of what the future held for me – the overwhelming number of possibilities have made it difficult to determine my path.

I am nowhere near figuring this out, if I ever will, and am way to young and inexperienced to offer proper advice on this matter. Though, maybe this framework that lends from Paul Graham, Justin kan, and Ben Horowitz can help you approach this big question in life from a new direction.

Overwhelming options

A luxury, I am well aware off. To be able to even consider your options is something that is not given to many people in different financial situations, living in different countries, or even different times. We should be highly aware of this privilege as such that we can be motivated to help others achieve this as well. At the same time, it is okay to take our own concern and struggle serious.

My grandmother has told me many times before that when she was young, there was no choice. She always wanted to be a kindergarten teacher but was pulled out of college by her dad only 3-months in. She had to work in her dad’s butcher store, and there was no way around it. Although she has always looked back and regretted the situation she was in, she now sees a younger generation with so many possibilities, struggling to decide what they have to do in life. “I never had to worry about this”, she said to me, “and I see how troublesome it can be to feel you need to figure it out on your own so early in life”. My granddad holds a similar story.

It is an incredibly interesting topic: finding your purpose. I am still not convinced it is something you will necessarily figure out. Most people are looking for an “aha”-moment where everything falls into place but maybe this simply does not exist. Trial and error, and an organic meandering towards a final destination, might be the way it has to go.

Why I am writing this short piece is because, in my quest of finding guidance in this process, I have come across a multitude of resources that can present a framework or some handles that can be used to find at least some direction. They all offer an interesting perspective, and I wanted to create a short, overarching collection with the goal of solidifying each. Furthermore, I thought of an additional frame of mind that might provide some guidance. It does not make it easy but hopefully I can share a new approach to finding your purpose in life.

Produce

Starting off with Paul Graham’s piece on doing what you love. Paul Graham, for those unfamiliar, is most famous for creating Y Combinator, the most successful startup accelerator in the world, funding and seeding incredible companies such as Airbnb, Dropbox, Instacart, and many more. His essays, written on an incredibly simple personal website, are famous among the biggest heads in tech. In this particular piece, he shares his own experience and that of those around him regarding the process of finding something you love to do. He immediately mentions the uncomfortable truth: “Doing what you love is complicated.” There is no way for me to adequately recap his blog post while retaining the same quality, so I highly recommend you read through it first yourself (http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html). As a matter of fact, if you are serious about setting this framework for yourself that might help get some guidance on finding your purpose, I would ask you to check it out before continuing with this piece.

Although many great points are made, what really stands out to me is the part about doing that which you naturally gravitate to and organically sustain over a period of time. As Paul mentions, it is not about what makes you happy this second but about what provides you happiness over an extended period of time.

One excellent test for this is continually producing. Instead of pushing forward a future ideal job, see if the same joy maintains if you already start acting on it right now even without any monetary results. As Paul mentions for example, instead of keeping up a fabricated future of writing children books when you are older or have earned just enough money, start writing content already. It is very confrontational because as you might expect, it could be you actually do not like writing stories for children. And finding that out bursts your bubble, the promise to yourself of a more enjoyable job in the future. But it should be good to figure out that it might be fake, instead of inevitably arriving at that same conclusion much later.

The end product versus the process

A thing I have been thinking about lately as well is the misconception many people might make regarding the difference between how a job is experienced from the outside versus from the inside. To make that less abstract, I am talking about a difference that exists between what is produced by a job versus the actual act and work that the job entails. It is easy to put these two together, although in many cases I believe this is a mistake.

I love to get inspired by videos about space exploration. It really warms my heart and gets me excited about the future. It has led me to believe that maybe this is what I should do because I would love to bring that feeling to others as well. Although that is a great motivation, you soon find out that the actual production of these videos and everything that goes into creating them – which makes up 99% of what you actually end up doing – is completely detached from the experience of the end result. That is a good thing to be aware of. Similarly, I have been pulled into making rap music and producing beats in the past. I love rap music and good beats. Hence, I probably like making them. Not necessarily true. Figuring out melodies, finding chords, working in a production interface, editing, recording, mastering… although they clearly have to do with music it is a very different experience than consuming the end product. I found out because I just tried (a practical experience of the above implementation of PG’s essay, this before I ever came across it).

Being great at something

Follow your passion is an advice that is often given. However, figuring out what your passion is is incredibly hard without having any practical experience but not only that, passions change over time and passions might not provide the financial freedom you desire. A somewhat contrarian speech by Ben Horowitz lays this out quite well (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaSqh4DiQSw). Ben Horowitz is former founder of Loudcloud and a co-founder of Andreesen-Horowitz, one of the most successful venture capital firms in the world, located in California. Other than being quite frankly an excellent listen from a comedic standpoint, the point he attempts to make is quite profound. “Do not follow your passion”. Do not follow your passion because 1) it is hard to prioritize which passion is your biggest, 2) your passion WILL change over time, and 3) it might not provide a good source of income (which up to a certain point is an important segment of having a fulfilling life – more on this later). You might not even be good at it in the first place. Instead, do what you are great at. Follow your contribution to the world. It does not mean throw out your passions altogether. It’s still of great value to be working in a field that is inherently interesting to you on a personal level. It should just not be its primary selling point. Find what you are great at, and go after that.

“Every human-being has genius-level talent. There are no chosen ones. God has given every single person genius-level talent. You just have to find what it is that you are great at, and then tap into it.”

– Jay-Z

This is a very interesting point. Most likely, whether in the past or currently, you have experienced what it is like to be good at something. It’s really, really nice. I remember being in high school and being incredibly good in mathematics. My dad is a math teacher and he always took the time to tutor me. I became so good at math that I ended up finishing my high school with a 9.3/10 average. The reason for this humble bragging is that it was one of the few things I actually enjoyed. Sure, I enjoy math’s purity and simplicity in hindsight but it stands out to me how much I liked being good at it. I liked it when I knew I was one of the best and I could tackle pretty much every problem in front of me. Challenging? Yes. But did I knew I could figure it out? Also, yes. This will lead to the following chapter on “flow”.

But before we move on, what if you do not feel like you are good at anything? I feel that way sometimes. I have an incredibly broad background ranging from liberal arts to strategic management, to web and blockchain development to entrepreneurship. I often feel a jack of all trades, master of none. But looking more thoroughly and honestly, I know I have strengths that I have yet to double down on. Given my experience building products – albeit not many incredibly successful – and being consumed in startups and projects every hour of the day as well as my broad background in development, I know that building products and covering its trajectory is something I have a knack for. Certainly, I am nowhere near an excellent product manager but I do believe the base is there on which to build. I am sure you have specific talents as well, even though they might have been largely underserved up till now.

Flow

Another source that might provide guidance for purpose and happiness in what we do: finding a job that allows you to reach a state of “flow”. This is a term coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his similarly named book “Flow” (“Flow” on Amazon), where he discussed what makes an activity truly fulfilling. It is a state of consciousness where one is optimally consumed by the activity at hand and time falls away. Maybe you have experienced this in the past as well where you might be locked into a specific task or activity as such that time flies by and nothing outside of what you are doing matters. It is that state of “flow” that is seen as a prominent driver of happiness and fulfillment in a job. It is evoked by an activity that requires enough skill to be challenging but is not too difficult to be frustrating. Referencing back to my math problems, this is exactly what I was talking about. A good challenge that requires enough cognition to be fully consumed in the task at hand while not being outside of my capabilities.

Bigger than yourself

What about making a difference? Yes, it is great to be good at something, it is great to reach that state of flow, but does it hold up in the long run? Is that enough? It seems that there is more we desire from the actions in our lives. We want to make a difference. Add something to the world. Help out a cause or people that we think deserve to be helped out. This can be incredibly fulfilling as well. 80,000hours is a platform that focuses primarily on this. Their idea is that you have 80,000 hours in your life that you will spend on your work and that it is worth considering up front how you want to spend these to contribute to something bigger than yourself. They are part of a new movement called “effective altruism” that uses data to help you decide what the best way is to make the most positive impact. Studies have shown that contributing to something bigger plays a major factor in overall satisfaction. You can notice this even at a small scale. Making a donation, lending a hand to somebody in need, offering food at homeless shelters. Independent of whether you are good, whether it is a passion, or whether you enjoy the process, it can be incredibly satisfactory.

Money only goes so far

It would be dishonest to suggest that what you earn does not matter. Evidently, knowing that you are earning enough to pay your rent or mortgage, buy good and healthy food, and provide for financial independence is critical. Being great at and enjoying what you do is amazing but not being able to pay for healthcare makes that a completely different experience. Hence, it is important to take this into consideration; what is the financial situation associated with this career? At the same time, we often falsely paint a picture for ourselves that a lot of money is going to solve all of the above mentioned aspects of what we do. It turns out that the additional happiness from an increase in income flattens out relatively quickly after the basics plus some additional freedom have been met. As a matter of fact, consistently studies have shown that additional happiness per extra income diminishes to negligible amounts after an annual income of $60,000.

And it makes sense. Having a lot of money will still lead you to pursue the above mentioned points. You will want to spend time doing meaningful activities you enjoy, you will want to contribute to something bigger, and you will want to find fitting challenging work. And your options might be even more numerous now, leading to even less guidance.

Relationships and values

Another way people can extract a lot of happiness out of their job is from the people they work with. Having a great team that feels like family can be a major differentiator in how you experience getting fulfillment out of the work you do. A hostile working environment or one that does not match your personal values is a great way to counter the enjoyment gotten from the actual activity you perform or the contribution that you make. It is such a driver for people that specific platforms have been put up that connect you to jobs primarily based on shared values (such as Key:Values). Some people that I spoke to discussing this issue mentioned that, even though they do not really care about the product they were working on, being able to help out their great colleagues was a major source of fulfillment. I am sure you have experienced this before as well, maybe in college or in high-school. Independent of the actual content of a project you might be working on with a group, the peers that you are working with are a major determinator for whether you enjoy the process or not.

Degree of success

Tying this all together, there is a graph that maps the degree of success in a particular job to its associated extracted happiness and fulfillment. The idea is similar to the end product versus process concept, however, this is focused on the degree of success, not the product. Often, and especially some years ago, I would think about possible careers only with the vision of a highly, highly successful version. When I would think about stock market investing I would get excited about the idea of me being a highly successful investor. When thinking about becoming a pro football player when I was younger I would get excited about the idea of me playing on the big stage. When thinking about being a founder, many a times I have only thought about being the one to build one of the most successful companies of the decade. And there is nothing wrong with this. It is great to have that vision and drive for success. However, it might cloud an honest evaluation of whether you will enjoy a particular career. There are chances you will not be that successful, and even in most cases when you will it will take quite some time. How much joy does it provide in that case? How would you enjoy or experience the job when you never get to that point or in the long time before you might get there? Here you will fall back on the factors mentioned above: are you great at it, can you find the flow, does it pay enough to have financial security, are the relationships good, and do you contribute to something bigger? 99% of the time this is what you will actually fall back on, so it is interesting to map this out. How dependent are you on the result? It’s never a great situation if you are heavily dependent on it. Whether being so drives you to push harder and thus makes chances of success greater, I am not convinced by. I believe you have a greater chance of success when you truly enjoy what you do, in comparison to when you do not and only do so when at success. Both can probably be good drivers but it is a good idea to ponder over what you honestly prefer.

Justin Kan makes a similar point. He is co-founder of Twitch, Atrium, as well as another handful of startups, and is seen as one of the most successful founders in the Valley. When he was younger, he mentions, he always had his happiness fully tied in with the success of the company. Over the years he has figured this out for himself and has started to focus on finding the happiness in the now, not based on whether what he is working on is successful in the future (around the 55-60 minute mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UScClQwJk0U). Meditation and mindfulness are profound methods of finding this but for sure the basics we have mentioned so far make this easier. It is much easier to find this state of contentment when your bills are paid, you extract joy and fulfilment from your daily life, and have a great group of people around you.

What does this look like, mapping out the extracted happiness as a function of the degree of success? Preferably you want to find a career path that starts with a high intercept and continuously rises as the degree of success increases (blue line). Whether a career will match such a trajectory seems dependent on everything we discussed above. What you most likely do not want is a superstar type of graph, where overall satisfaction and happiness extracted is terribly low but only at an incredibly high rate of success shoots up drastically (red line), or a career that you kind of enjoy from the onset but never really increases in happiness extracted (black line). You want to find a blue-line career: one that will provide you a great deal of happiness and fulfillment right from the start which only increases as you become more and more successful.

The framework

This is what I am going to try and use to figure out what I should be doing, what my blue-line career is. I’ll let you know in a few years how it turned out. Answering the following questions properly is most likely something that can give some great guidance.

1. Do I naturally gravitate to this activity and come back to it long term?
2. Am I great at this or can I become great at this (natural talent)?
3. Does it provide access to the “flow”?
4. Does it allow me to have solid financial security?
5. Does it allow me to make a bigger, positive impact than just on myself?
6. Will I (generally) enjoy the type of people I’ll be working with?
7. How dependent is this all on the degree of success?

Let me know what you think. You can find me on twitter at @vvdhout. Hopefully this can help you out a bit in your search for doing what you love. I wish you all the best.