The Meaning of Life: From Purpose to Action
June 22nd, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
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Once you’ve identified your overall purpose/mission, the next step is to turn that purpose into achievable goals, projects, and actions.
I’ve written extensively about this subject already, so I don’t have anything profoundly new to share within the scope of this “meaning of life” series. This entry will mostly be links to previous content.
Once you have your overall context and your purpose worked out, you begin setting goals that would be congruent with that purpose. Here’s a blog entry that explains which questions to ask and how to get started on that: Living Congruently.
The basic idea is that you must align your purpose with your needs, abilities, and desires. Your purpose tells you what you should do. Your needs (money, shelter, clothing) dictate what you must do. Your abilities (skills, talents, education) dictate what you can do. And your desires (enjoyable work, passion) dictate what you want to do. Taken individually each of these areas will only point you in a general direction, but when you put them all together, you’ll find it easier to set specific, practical goals. This way you’ll be setting goals that help you fulfill your purpose, meet your needs, do what you love to do, and do what you’re really good at.
Next, for more specific info on goal-setting, read this article:
The Power of Clarity
Finally, for turning goals into projects and actions, read:
Quarterly Planning Time
More on Planning
That’s a lot of reading to be sure, but this is a complex subject. There are whole books written just on subsets of this topic, like David Allen’s Getting Things Done and Stephen Covey’s First Things First.
Tomorrow we’ll cover the topic of transitioning, moving from a non-purpose-driven life to a purpose-driven life.
This post is part four of a six-part series on the meaning of life:
Part 1: Intro
Part 2: How Shall We Live?
Part 3: Discover Your Purpose
Part 4: From Purpose to Action
Part 5: Transitioning
Part 6: Conscious Evolution
June 22nd, 2005 at 7:30 pm
Hi Steve!
First of all, I wanted to thank you for the efforts you put in your articles, they are really inspiring and thoughtful.
If you could find some time, please read my entry on video games influenting our lives, here: http://nickpasko.blogspot.com/2005/06/dark-side-of-
entertainment.html
Of course, that’s just a mere shadow of your own wisdom
, yet I hope it could help someone to understand the problem better.
June 22nd, 2005 at 11:11 pm
I’ll back up the mention of Covey’s FIRST THINGS FIRST. I’ve been a fan of the ideas behind his approach since I first read 7 HABITS a year ago, but haven’t really started putting any of it into practice until picking up FIRST THINGS a week ago. HUGELY helpful; I’m only a week in and not even through the book but I can already see it’s a great way to organize and prioritize. Moreover, it forces you to stop and think about your personal mission, purpose and roles as a part of the to-do list.
Love your blog, by the way. You’re going on my blogroll today!
June 23rd, 2005 at 6:19 am
What’s the relationship between List of Values and Mission Statement? Is the Mission Statement your Purpose and the List of Values gives you things to focus on?? (Because the things in the List of Values can shift around…)
Regarding Long Term goals — I can put all the “impossible” (according to my current thinking) goals there right and wait for my thinking to change to make them possible…
This is the first time I have done something like this — after writing down how to structure my goals/plans document — I get the feeling: “Hey, you mean I get to focus on only those things that I write down and not care about all the other things?!?” — and a great relief comes over me. I guess I have been worrying over all the small details up close without any planning — like everyday I would say to myself, “If I do this, then where I want to be in 2 years will be taken care of” — but it would be a different thing every single day and wouldn’t have any lasting power.
June 23rd, 2005 at 6:26 am
@Sri: Read these articles:
Living Your Values, Part I
Living Your Values, Part II