Without purpose, you drift through a meaningless existence. Every day is drudgery, and happiness is fleeting. This void is filled with cheap dopamine: drugs, alcohol, and social media addiction.

The average person does not have direction on how to find purpose. They don’t know where to begin, leaving them with a lack of control over where they end up in life.

When you are in school, direction and goals are assigned to you, but when you leave school you are left to figure these things out for yourself.

When I was given more control over what I wanted to do with my life when I entered University, I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do which was become a physical therapist. After two years of pursuing this career path, I concluded that it was not for me. Leaving me without purpose. Spending thousands of dollars a year without an idea of what to try next. I was living without a purpose and was being punished for not having one.

I have always had an affinity for technology. In High School I would dabble with learning Software Engineering in my free time. When I was lost at university I picked this back up again thinking nothing of it. Eventually I dropped out and started to learn on my own, taking full control of my own destiny. This was the catalyst that pushed me to find purpose. I was determined to program my own mind instead of my mind being programmed by someone or some institution. It gave me the autonomy to pursue my passion and eventually finding purpose.

Connections Shape Relevance

Finding connections between the information that you encounter both externally from the world around you or internal thoughts, will determine how relevant information is, thus giving you a compass, pointing you in the direction of your purpose.

  • Ideas gain more relevance by connecting them to other ideas.
  • Google ranks sites based on the number of other sites that are linked to it.
  • Industry connections lead to your dream job.

How I was able to find purpose when I left University was to find intersections between my curiosities which developed into passion and passion into purpose.

But, the problem is: how do you start to make the connections needed to develop passion and turn it into purpose? To answer this question you must first understand how your brain works.

The Pattern Recognition System – How Your Brain Works

Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ’em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form. You’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience, both vicarious and direct, on this latticework of models. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head. (Charlie Munger 1994).

Traditional schooling has engrained in your mind that you need to remember isolated facts to be able to pass a test to get a grade. This the incorrect approach to learning, it does not fit well with the architecture of you brain.

Your brain has two modes. “linear” thinking which is slow and takes a lot of conscious mental energy to perform. Linear thinking is what you have been taught in school to primarily use. It is used to process information, the content you consume:

  • Books
  • Videos
  • Articles

The second mode which is arguably the more important is called “diffused” thinking. This is your unconscious mind at work, which works 24/7 for you. It is what allows you to make connections between information and have the information stick around long-term because you have now given your brain a “why” behind the information that you are consuming.

If you don’t have a latticework of interconnected information, then you don’t have the information in a useable from. You don’t have a why behind the information you are consuming.

Your brain is a processing and connection machine. But, your brain is not well suited for storing information in detail and you can only hold so much in your working memory at a time. Having all you best ideas laid out in front of you is invaluable to making connections to generate new insight and direction to your purpose.

The Synergy: Your Brain and Technology

Your senses collect 11 million bits of information a second. Which is way too much information for your brain to handle. Which tells you that most of reality is invisible to you. Thus, it must filter out information that is not important for your survival.

Are brains have not adapted to the information age, it is still working as if you are a cave man. Constantly gathering information from your environment that is pertinent for your survival.

You have to override your brains default behavior – you have to load it with the raw material needed to make connections that lead to purpose in the information age that we live in.

Start to get specific about what information you are looking for. This allows your brains pattern recognition system to make the connections you are looking for between the content you consume and your experiences.

Leverage technology to do the things you cave man mind is not well suited for – storing information in detail.

The bicycle for you mind. (Steve Jobs)

Use computers in the way that Steve Jobs intended them to be used, as a bicycle for your mind.

Computers allow you tame the modern information chaos. By recording your best ideas you start to cultivate a critical mass of information that you can generate new insight to derive direction to your purpose.

It gives you an environment that allows you to control entropy. You start to become proactive and intentional about the content you consume. What you consume is no longer dictated by an algorithm.

Develop a Digital Environment For Success

The combination of external physical conditions that affect and influence the growth, development, and survival of organisms.

A digital environment is a garden that you tend to. You water and refine your ideas, find connections, and discover purpose.

All of your ideas are in one place and is a place that takes on the role of a thinking partner.

You never have to start from scratch again. All of your best ideas are easily searchable and retrievable in a moments notice.

It is a place of sanity in a world of chaos and high entropy. It is a dojo to train your mind – a bicycle for your mind.

Find Purpose

By understanding how you brain works and leveraging technology to cover the short comings of your cave man mind, you give yourself a fighting chance at taming the modern information chaos. You give your brain the raw materials needed to find purpose.

1) Develop Your Digital Environment

  • Download a note taking app that allows you to link notes together. This is the corner stone of you digital environment. All of your best ideas are then recorded down into this note taking app and are connected together through links. I like to use Obsidian, but any note taking app that allows you to link notes together will do.
  • Use a to-do list app. This is where you store all of your action items. Separate the information you consume by recording ideas into your note taking app and action items into you your to-do list app.
  • Use a calendar app to free you mind form having to remember the time and place of where you have to be in the future. This allow you to spend that would be wasted mental energy on things that will help figure out your purpose.

2) Go On Walks

Walking is an indispensable tool that I use to help me generate my best insights. It gives your brain a chance to active it’s diffused thinking.

Going on walks is a form of meditation that allows ideas to flood you mind that your mind automatically uses to make far flung connections.

Make sure to have your note taking app on you phone so that you can capture these often fleeing connections and process them later.

3) Work On Multiple Projects At The Same Time

By working on multiple projects at the same time, you are intermingling seemingly unrelated information that allows you mind to remix and connect information to generate your own new perspectives.

4) Take Action

If you talk about it, it’s a dream. If you envision it, it’s possible. If you schedule it, it’s real. (Tony Robbins)

What is the point of making these connections if you are not going to take action on them?

Make it a habit to use your note taking app to process you ideas, your to-do list app to list action items to act on, and use your calendar to schedule a time and place that these action steps need to happen.

So:

Leverage technology and your understanding of how your brain works to find intersections in your curiosities to develop passion which will lead your to purpose.

Your purpose in life is fluid. It will change a few times throughout your life. It is your job to always to seek out what your next purpose is.

– Phil