J.D. Moyer

sci-fi author, beatmaker

Tag: life purpose Page 2 of 3

Why Is It Important to Define Your Life Purpose?

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On May 21

In Creative Work/Career, Life Purpose & Goals, Metaprogramming

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It sounds intimidating, to define the purpose of your life. It also sounds unnecessary. Why not just live? Why not just enjoy life, and take each day as it comes?

I don’t think there is any ultimate purpose to life beyond what we decide is important. I think James Altucher puts it well in this post:

“People get depressed now if they feel they are not fulfilling a purpose in life.

Here’s what I think purpose is: the universe doesn’t know anything. So it cut off tiny pieces of itself to go out there and experience things, any things, and then come back home when they were done.

That’s it. So whatever you are experiencing today, good or bad, the universe is learning and happy and grateful to you because it is exploring new things about life.

BAM!

No other purpose.”

I don’t believe in any kind of singular, universal purpose (not even the poetic purpose Altucher describes), but I do feel better and live better when I live by my own principles. What do I think is important? How much am I willing to bet on those values? How ’bout everything. All in.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, in a beautiful response to a question on a reddit (“What can you tell a young man looking for motivation in life itself?”) gets to the core rationale for defining one’s own purpose in life:

“The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.”

Love, meaning, and motivation all work together. You can discover what gives life meaning (for you) by listening to your heart (in fact I think this is the best way to discover meaning). For Tyson, increasing personal knowledge and reducing human (and perhaps also animal) suffering reflect his core values (codified into purpose, or “main philosophies” as he puts it). He advises the young man looking for motivation to decide what is important to him, and then act on it.

If the word “purpose” rubs you the wrong way, consider defining your “core values” or “life philosophy” instead. For you, what gives life meaning?

Motivation and Goals

Does motivation automatically flow from purpose and meaning? Not necessarily. Low motivation can be a sign of low dopamine in certain parts of the brain, depression, and/or overstimulation.

But jacking up the neurotransmitters involved in motivation doesn’t actually lead to productive or helpful activity unless there are already well-established habits in those areas (yes, the movie Limitless is a fantasy). For example, bromocriptine is a powerful dopamine agonist. Side effects include gambling and compulsive shopping. Reward-seeking behavior, in other words, but not really what most people think of when they think about motivation. Drugs like modafinil can enhance concentration, motivation, and cognitive abilities, but come with disruptive and potentially health-damaging side effects. Videogames are designed to jack up reward-seeking behavior, and sometimes the dopamine boost can overflow into other life areas. But just as easily, videogames can suck time and energy, providing the feelings of motivation and drive (achievements! points! levels!) without any real-world effects.

Goal-setting can also temporarily increase motivation, but if a goal isn’t purpose-driven, the motivation boost will be short-lived. If I don’t care about money very much, setting a “goal” to become a billionaire isn’t going to do squat. Even if I come up with a plan and work that plan like a maniac, I’m going to lose steam if I don’t actually care about becoming rich. Goals shouldn’t require motivation, they should provide motivation. And goals only provide motivation when they line up with life purpose/core values.

Here’s my own system for turning purpose into action. Feel free to steal it (I’ve stolen all the bits from other people).

1. Make a 5-year commitment that is true to your life purpose (and/or values and/or life philosophy). Where do you want to be in 5 years? As Steve Pavlina points out, we often overestimate what we can do in a single year, but underestimate what we can do in five years.

2. Choose a single actionable goal that supports your 5-year commitment. Give yourself a target date. If it appeals to you, set up additional rewards (completing the goal will be a reward in itself) and “kick-in-the-butt motivators” (I prefer this phrasing to “punishment”) around the goal. For example when I was trying to finish the first draft of my most recent novel, I promised myself I wouldn’t consume any alcohol until I finished (which resulted in this post, and also finishing my first draft).

3. Commit to a daily practice (don’t break the chain!) that moves you closer to your goal. If you can, complete this practice early in the day, when your willpower and concentration are at their highest. If you don’t have that luxury, just carve out some time every day. Even an hour a day of focused work will get you somewhere.

Even if you don’t choose this kind of structured approach to living your life, it’s still worth it to choose your own purpose in life. At the very least, you’ll have something to fall back on when the “What am I doing here?” question pops into your head. And oh yeah, you’ll live longer.

How to Discover Your Life Purpose, Set a Primary Goal, and Stay On Track

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On November 29

In Creative Work/Career, Getting Organized, Life Purpose & Goals, Metaprogramming

Unless you are the Remover of Obstacles and Lord of Beginnings, you’ll probably need to pick just one goal at a time.

In my last post I wrote about why I think setting goals is important. I addressed some of my own reservations regarding goal-setting. Is ambitious goal-setting selfish? Is it obnoxious and annoying to others?

I suggest you read that post first. But if you’re ready to get into the details, my five step system for exploring life purpose and setting a primary goal is below.

It’s a long post, but it’s the whole deal. I’ve come to this system after decades of diversions and hard-won experience. So get a fresh cup of coffee, and welcome to my world.

Step 1: Soul-Searching, Purpose & Calling

Seneca’s reputation may suffer as a result of self-promotion guru Tim Ferriss quoting him so much. But before the Seneca backlash is in full swing, I’ll get this relevant quote in:

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A New Approach to Goal Setting (Introduction, and Reservations)

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On November 27

In Creative Work/Career, Getting Organized, Life Purpose & Goals, Metaprogramming

Go with the path or hop the fence?

Over the last six months I’ve started using a new approach to goal-setting that I’ve found to be effective, enlivening, and motivating. I’m still ironing out the kinks in the system, but I’m far enough along that I want to share my approach and my results so far.

As I’ve mentioned before I consider myself to be (in role-playing game nomenclature) a “multi-classed character”. I have many interests and ambitions, and I find it difficult to pursue one at a time. I’m probably in the majority; it’s a rare human being who naturally has a single-minded pursuit or singular quest throughout their entire lives. Most people have many interests, like to do many different things, and want to acquire a wide range of experiences. Overall it’s an effective strategy — the multi-class character ends up with multiple skills set and diverse social networks, and is thus less vulnerable to economic downturns, changing popular tastes, and other vagaries of modern life.

The drawback of going broad, in life, is that you don’t necessarily get to go as deep (or if you do go deep, it takes you longer to get there). It takes longer to level up (to acquire achievements, recognition, mastery, and so forth).

So that’s one reason I’ve been refining and developing my goal-setting system; I want to go deeper and level up in certain areas. But it’s not the main reason. The main reason is …

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Getting To Know Yourself, Finally (Practices for Active Self Knowledge)

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On July 11

In Metaprogramming

“Self-knowledge” has a pretentious ring to it, but it’s really a down-to-earth concept. Do you know yourself? Do you understand what makes you tick? Do you have some grip on what’s important to you? Your likes and dislikes?

Self knowledge comes to people at different stages in life. Some ten-year-olds know, unwaveringly, exactly who they are and what they want to do in life. Other people die old and regretful, always living other people’s agendas and never grabbing what they wanted out of life for themselves.

It can be disruptive to look inward. When you turn a spotlight on your own values, desires, and sense of purpose, it can create cognitive dissonance with the current reality of your life. You might end up quitting a job, ending a friendship, or moving to a different city. Or you might reaffirm existing aspects of your life and “double down” on what makes you happy.

The process itself can be emotionally exhausting and mentally difficult. It’s hard to “zoom out” and think about your life in the abstract. On the other hand it’s also simple. What’s working? What isn’t? What makes you happy? What makes you crazy?

The dividends of investing in active self-knowledge are enormous. To live your life “on purpose” instead of by inertia means more happiness, more clarity, better health, and better relationships.

It also means a better world. When you encounter social systems and structures that conflict with your values and purpose, and you know what your values and purpose are, there will be heat and friction. You’ll resist. Millions of individuals resisting adds up to social change.

So where do you start?

The Self-Knowledge Blueprint

There are a multitude of practices that might lead to increased self-knowledge, including meditation, cognitive therapy, and journaling. In this post I’ll look at a very direct approach — grappling directly with questions of purpose, values, and ethics.

For myself, trying to answer the following questions, in writing, as concisely as possible, has resulted in some major “a-ha!” moments and life course corrections:

  1. What is my life purpose? I like Steve Pavlina’s method for exploring this question, but there are others that might be just as effective.
  2. What are my personal values? Friendship? Family? Learning? Service?
  3. What are my societal values? What’s most important, to you, on a societal or civic level? Scientific research? Public health? Education? Protecting the environment?
  4. What is my personal code of ethics? Under what conditions would you ever lie, steal, cheat, or kill? Never? To protect your family? To increase your personal wealth?
  5. What are my heart-driven action priorities? What is your heart telling you is most important to do in life?
  6. What daily practices work for me, bringing me energy and happiness? Meditation? Writing? Running? Keeping a clean house?
  7. What situations or activities have I tried enough times to know I should just avoid them? Crowds? Musicals? Martinis? Tennis?

Don’t try to tackle the whole list at once. The questions are difficult, so you should get a full night’s sleep between each exercise so that your subconscious mind can process your answers (several times I’ve gone to bed feeling muddled and confused about one of these questions and then woken up with total clarity).

I revisit each question periodically. Do my answers still ring true? Have I changed? Sometimes I change my responses, and this leads to changes in my behavior. The self fluctuates, and active self knowledge is an iterative process.

I hope this post was helpful to you, so that you can live your life a little more on purpose.

5 Skills You Need To Thrive In Modernity (That Nobody Bothered To Teach You)

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On November 15

In Advice for Young People, Creative Work/Career, Culture Rants/Shares, Metaprogramming

Modern life requires unusual skill sets.

Like rats and pigeons, human beings are highly adaptable, flexible animals.  As a species we inhabit some of the coldest and hottest parts of the planet, as well as all the temperate zones.  Most of us live in cities, some of us make a living from subsistence farming, and a few hang on to traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyles.  Within those broad categories, we have created a stunning array of diverse cultural customs, political systems, economic and production modes, and civic institutions.

The one constant of modern human life is an accelerated rate of cultural and technological change.  This is true not only for those of us who live in cities and use computers; most remaining traditional hunter-gather societies are being forced to change just as rapidly because of climate change, environmental destruction, and interactions with technology-using cultures.  In traditional and modern cultures alike, each generation is growing up with different sets of opportunities, challenges, and cultural landscapes.

It wasn’t always this way.  Humans practiced a variety of hunter-gatherer lifestyles for tens of thousands of years with little, if any, change from one generation to the next.  The change to an agricultural lifestyle was momentous, but in most cases it happened gradually, over a number of generations.

With the Industrial Revolution, and more recently the advent of computer technology, the rate of cultural change has accelerated immensely.  Not only does each generation live differently than their parents, but today’s modern human must learn to live a completely different lifestyle multiple times within a single lifetime.

My parents remember a time before there was a television in every house.  I remember a time before there was a computer in every house.  In my late teens and twenties I learned how to make music with computers; something that was only done by technologically elite experimentalists ten years previously was now available to the masses.  A few years later I learned how to build and program databases.  An arcane skill once practiced only by guys in lab coats with advanced engineering degrees was now available to a kid just out of college with no formal technology training.

Technological change doesn’t just create new opportunities for individuals, it also creates and transforms (and sometimes destroys) entire industries.  Record labels, companies that make film (like Kodak), newspapers, and book publishers have all been forced to radically reinvent themselves (or perish) because of technological change.  People with specialized skill-sets working within those industries can find themselves not only out of work, but without skills for which there is any demand in the new markets.

If the only constant is change, what skills should we teach our kids?  And what skills, or meta-skills, should we focus on in our own lives to stay culturally relevant, economically viable, and sane?

Since my own culture is “western modernity,” more-or-less, that’s what I’ll write about.  The list isn’t meant to be culturally universal, or definitive.

5 Skills Needed To Thrive Within Western Modernity

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