I have been extremely lucky countless times in my life. I had no influence over where I was born, when I was born, nor the family and values I grew up within. Yet, these were immensely important factors that have shaped me into who I am today. This doesn’t even acknowledge the impact of coaches, teachers, and role models who devoted their time to helping me. I absolutely could not be where I am today without the patient mentorship so many people have provided. Thus, the goal of this page is to condense the most important advice I have received and share a useful framework that has shaped my vision of what meaningful work, the skills I developed to formulate that idea, and some practices to cultivate those skills.
I’m assuming the life you want is founded on two things, meaningful relationships and meaningful work. This post will focus on finding meaningful work. The way to determine if work is meaningful, is determining the value of completing it.
Finding meaningful work is as simple and difficult as asking yourself WHY? WHAT? and HOW?
Asking yourself why you do something exposes the underlying layers of intention and value behind your work. This applies to every action and the deeper you go with your answers to the question WHY?, the more meaningful an action becomes.
For instance, WHY did I choose to go into consulting when my background was catered to engineering? Well, I want to become an entrepreneur and a successful entrepreneur who studied engineering explained how starting in consulting helped him develop leadership and business skills critical in starting his first business. WHY do I want to become an entrepreneur? Well, the people I look up to like Bill Gates and Elon Musk have a hugely positive impact on society through their philanthropic and technological ventures and I want to have a similarly positive impact though, most likely a smaller magnitude. WHY do I want to have that impact on society? Well I recognize how lucky I have been in terms of circumstance and I had no influence over that, so I want to create similar opportunities for those who weren’t as lucky as I was. And I think society could do a much better job of taking care of itself and the world. I could go on and on, but the point is, I connect my decision into a larger purpose and the meaning I derive from my massive calling, drives my resilience and work ethic.
When you know why you are doing something, you have a reason to endure and persist in difficult circumstances. In other words, setting and keeping goals that are bigger than yourself, empowers you with the resilience to do difficult things. The catch is, they need to be meaningful, the more meaningful a calling, the more you can endure.
Elon Musk was inspired by the space race and when he left Paypal, decided he wanted to get humanity to the Mars to prevent the possibility of human extinction through a global catastrophe. So he invested $100M into started a private rocket company that everyone bet would fail. His first rocket, Falcon 1, only had enough funding for three launches and after the third failure, he barely managed to build one last rocket from spare parts that was partially funded by employee donations. It launched successfully and saved the company during the 2008 financial crisis. That’s a lot of stress for a man who easily could’ve happily retired from his $165M PayPal exit. If this pursuit was not meaningful, there is no reason Elon would put so much time, effort, and money into it.
So ask yourself WHY you do anything and what the meaning is behind it. Once you have a massively transformative purpose, you need to find out WHAT actions are most effective in achieving that. What you do matters because it directly satisfies your why.
It’s incredible what Elon Musk has done to the aerospace industry. The average cost to launch a kilogram into space before 2000 was $18,500, the Falcon 9 brought that down to $2720 per kg. That’s ridiculous, and just one of many accomplishments of SpaceX. Musk simultaneously runs Tesla, The Boring Company, Open AI, and Neuralink. Each of these companies addresses a singular component of Musk’s larger vision, to prevent the collapse of humanity. In pursuing such an ambitious and large goal, he has identified and is actively working on solutions to potentially humanity ending threats. Being a single planet species means we could go extinct in the event of a nuclear catastrophe or an event that changes Earth faster than we can adapt, so SpaceX is working to get us to Mars. Climate change causes more frequent and severe natural disasters which destabilize communities and force migration which we don’t react well to (ex: Syrian Refugee crisis & Israel/Palestine conflict) so to address unsustainable energy, Tesla’s mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy through building electric vehicles and clean energy storage products. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is accelerating and its applications enhance the world today, but what happens if AI somehow creates a smarter AI which does the same? What can we do if we create an intelligent being that decides to get rid of us? Open AI is an open source AI research non profit actively seeking to prevent that from happening and Neuralink is working to increase human brain processing power to increase human processing power and provide us a chance to stop AI should it get out of control. Elon Musk achieves his WHY of preventing humanity’s collapse through a multiple companies that specifically address WHAT needs to be done to achieve his why.
Figuring out WHAT to do to achieve your WHY is important because the fulfillment and meaning of your actions is directly proportional to how effective they are in achieving your long term goals. Once you have found your WHAT, the actions you need to take to fulfill your WHY, you then need to figure out HOW to most effectively complete those actions. HOW you do something is significant, because it directly relates to how effective your actions are, which directly relate to how effective you are at fulfilling your purpose. In other words, your HOW determines the effectiveness of your WHAT which fulfills your WHY.
Elon Musk preaches the concept of vertical integration, which is the process of consolidating production stages and streamlining development. One problem contributing to prohibitively high costs of the aerospace industry is the daisy chain of contractors. The US government will tell NASA to go to the Moon and provide a budget which NASA will then spend on mission critical components like the rocket, the lunar lander, and space suits. Each of these components will then have a budget which contractors bid for to design and manufacture. Large contractors, like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrup Grumman win the contracts and then outsource sub-components that smaller contractors will bid for doing design, analysis, or manufacturing of those parts. This continues for a couple more layers and since each company needs to make money, they add a premium into the price which of course compounds to astronomical budgets. SpaceX actively cuts out these subcontractors by developing its own parts and processes internally, increasing the initial cost to save money down the line and improving internal capabilities. This is work intensive but in dong so, they offer nearly a 10x reduction in price compared to their competitors. All these contractors are competing for the same WHAT, the contract and funding to build a specific part in the Artemis mission, but SpaceX’s HOW is what gives them an edge.
I use Elon Musk and SpaceX to explain this thought process but it applies to everyone who has done something extraordinary. Bill Gates’s WHY is something along the lines of helping humanity progress forward. His WHAT first manifested in creating Microsoft with the original mission statement of putting “A computer on every desk and in every home” because he understood the power of computers and how much more they enabled people to do. Today, Gates runs with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that is actively using Bill’s Microsoft earnings to address global health issues like access to clean water, the eradication of polio, and their recent total dedication to addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. Bill’s WHY manifests through multiple WHATs which continues to make his work meaningful. His WHATs are effective in fulfilling his WHY through his dedication to HOW. Microsoft’s HOW manifested in its remarkably adaptive strategy, for instance licensing its operating and productivity software to the competitive computer manufacturing market. In addition, this adaptability also allowed them to capitalize on the explosive growth of the internet by creating and bundling Internet Explorer with their products faster than any other large competitor. Today, Microsoft has cultivated a growth mindset focused culture in which bold customer focused innovation and experimentation is rewarded, helping them disrupt themselves before other companies do.
By asking yourself WHY, WHAT, and HOW, you will reflect on the purpose behind your work, the effectiveness of your work achieving your purpose, and the effectiveness of the process behind doing your work. Now you’re probably wondering something along the lines of, “Okay cool dude, you just asked three really simple but ambiguous questions that just reordered what Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why”’s golden circle, but how do I go about answering those questions?”
Good question! The following skills will help you answer each of those questions and I’ll elaborate on some habits/practices you can integrate into your life to further develop those skills. I’ll explain the difference between my thinking and Simon Sinek’s at the end!
Develop Self-Awareness through Meditation to answer WHY
Self awareness is the awareness of what you’re thinking, doing, and feeling, but more importantly why. Self awareness is the root of self feedback.
To understand WHY you do something is really to understand the intention and purpose behind your action. This doesn’t come naturally, because your mind is often focused on doing the action rather than reflecting on it. It is only when you reflect on why you do something, that you gain insight into what drives your actions and the option to judge if that motivation is valuable. What you do not notice, you cannot understand, so it is imperative that you first notice the intention behind your actions before you can understand them. To cultivate the ability to notice your intentions, you need to develop your self awareness which is most effectively done through meditation.
Just like you can physically train your body to fine tune your body control, you can mentally train your mind to fine tune your attention control. Mindful meditation is simply the practice of “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally".” and by paying attention to the present, you become hyper aware of the separation between your observing mind and thinking mind. Getting carried away in thoughts happens without fail, but the act of noticing you are no longer present with whatever you are paying attention to and redirecting your attention without judgement, gradually helps you become aware of your mental processes. It is a simple task in concept, yet exceptionally difficult to do in practice, but the continual practice and ability to be completely present will calm your mind and body. The awareness of how your mind and body feel increases your mental awareness and clarity, improving your ability to actively reflect on what drives you to act and how fulfilling your work is.
I highly recommend “Joy On Demand” to learn more.
Develop a Willingness to Fail through Cold Showers to answer WHAT
A willingness to fail, is the mental courage to overcome your internal resistance at the edge of your comfort zone.
Brené Brown reminded me of this quote from Theodore Roosevelt and it struck a cord with me.
“It’s not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the person who is in the arena. Whose face is marred with dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly ... who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly ...”
Figuring out WHAT you like and what you find fulfilling is not a task you can solve through thinking. Calculated guesses can calibrate what you think you might like, but the only way to truly find your calling, is to act upon something and reflect on your experience. But starting new things is difficult, because it’s unfamiliar and your emotional mind does not like unfamiliar things. Training yourself to overcome this opposition and to act in spite of your mental resistance will provide you the valuable experiences that provide real insight into whether or not your current WHAT is as effective as you want it to be. It helped me a lot to look at new experiences as a win - win. There are two possible results whenever I try something new, the first is I try it and I like it, and the second is that I try it and I don’t. The first case is great because I found a new thing I like which is an absolute win, but what about the second? What about trying something, not liking it, and possibly looking like an idiot while doing so. Well, those are learning experiences and upon reflecting on my occasional cringe-worthy attempts, I gain deeper insight into how I respond in uncomfortable situations and how to respond better in the future. But the key to gaining value from negative experiences, is being painfully honest and vulnerable with yourself, processing your emotions, and reflecting on what you could have done differently that might’ve improved the outcome.
In order to cultivate a willingness to fail, you need to learn how to overcome the flinch, the strong initial resistance to an uncomfortable experience. A really accessible and effective way to train this is to take cold showers. Taking cold showers is uncomfortable because nobody likes being cold and wet, but cold showers reduce stress level, increase alertness, improve your immune system, increase your willpower, and help weight loss. These are incredible benefits yet very few people actively choose to receive them despite being readily available. If you can muster the mental courage to take cold showers and overcome that mental flinch on a daily basis, your willingness to deal with discomfort will improve, which will help you try new things, helping you find the best WHAT to fulfill your WHY sooner.
Develop Meta Learning through Passion Projects to answer HOW
Meta Learning is the process of learning about how to learn.
In Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein argues that generalists who juggle many interests and specialize late bring a unique skill set that combines the lessons of their previous ventures that makes them more creative and agile than their early specialized peers. As someone who has pursued a variety of extracurricular activities and industries, my confirmation bias absolutely loves this argument. In order to try a variety of things, generalists cultivate the ability to learn completely new things more often than a specialist would expanding their specific knowledge base. This attitude cultivates meta-learning, learning how to learn, which helps with new skill acquisition. With the abundance of information today and the accelerating innovation of technology, today’s cutting edge technology will quickly be outed by new technologies and processes. These new processes will require an updated learning, which can take time to learn, but if you learn how you learn, you can streamline this process and adapt quicker. This increases your efficiency and effectiveness, which allows you to experiment more and discover the best effective method of completing your actions and fulfilling your purpose. In other words, meta learning accelerates the process of finding the best HOW to accomplish your WHAT to satisfy your WHY.
But how do you develop meta-learning? Passion Projects. If you have any interest in something, there is an abundance of resources today to help you learn how to do whatever you’re interested in. There is no shortage of exciting projects you can be working on while developing new skills and more importantly developing your ability to learn. The hardest part of any passion project is getting started and the then staying consistent. Everyone faces these challenges, but luckily there are ways to leverage your own psychology to overcome these hurdles. Passion projects are undoubtedly time consuming and can create amazing things, but the scale of them often deters people from starting so they’ll wait until they have more time or learn a little more before getting started. In doing so, their passion project stays in their mind forever. The trick is to just start and if you have no motivation, do something, literally anything. There’s this thing called the do something principle, which reorients the idea that you need inspiration to have motivation to do an action. In reality this is a circular loop and if you start with taking action, even small action, you will find inspiration, creating motivation, leading to larger action. It’s important to sustain this momentum and the hardest part is starting the momentum. Once it’s a habit, it doesn’t feel like work, it’s just something you do.
Block out 30 minutes every day or 2 hours every weekend to work on your passion project, this will rest your mind and allow incremental improvement on your project. Even better, promise yourself to only work on your project for 5 minutes, so it’s so ridiculously easy to fulfill your goal and once you’ve gotten started, you’ll want to continue working, which mentally you can reward yourself as extra work! Good job, you’re such an over achiever :) Over time, you’ll amass a collection of passion projects and an toolkit of useful and practical skills that you can be proud of. You’ll reminisce in your earlier projects, remember the struggles, but have something to show for it and hopefully be proud of the progress you have made. In pursuing these passion projects, you engage your brain to continue learning, growing, and strengthening your brain’s synapses responsible for learning new things and developing new skills. That skill alone will provide immense dividends in not just your career, but more importantly your life. Innovation isn’t slowing down so it’s imperative you develop the skills today so you can make the impact you want tomorrow.
My goal for the page was to share a useful framework that has helped me shape the vision of who I want to become and steps to take to get there. Let’s summarize the framework, the useful skills, and the actions you can take to develop the useful skills and best utilize the framework.
The most important questions to ask yourself when thinking about what you want to do in life are WHY, WHAT, and HOW, in that exact order. Ask yourself WHY you do anything, what purpose does this action serve? What is the underlying motivation or desire that I am trying to fulfill? Your answer to WHY should reveal the intentions and purpose behind WHAT you do in life. Then, ask yourself WHAT can you do and WHAT are are doing? Your answer to WHAT should be the most effective action of your available options to fulfill your WHY. Lastly, ask yourself HOW can I best progress on my WHAT? The method you come up by answering HOW to do your WHAT will determine the effectiveness of accomplishing your WHY. This structure will help you identify what your purpose is, what actions fulfill your purpose, and how to maximize the effectiveness of your actions, therefore maximizing your fulfillment of your purpose.
Answering WHY requires Self-Awareness because you need to understand the action you’re taking, the underlying motivation and purpose of it, and whether or not you truly align with and are fulfilled by that purpose. To develop Self-Awareness, you can practice meditation, which is simply the act of noticing. By mentally battling your lack of control of your own intention, you become aware of your own mental clutter and gradually begin calming the mind which brings clarity into your life. This clarity will help you become aware of the motivations driving your actions and allow you to decide if they are worthwhile.
Answering WHAT requires a Willingness to Fail because once you understand the purpose you are trying to fulfill, you can begin measuring the effectiveness of fulfilling that purpose through a variety of actions (WHATs). Your habits have determined your comfort zone which resists the unknown and unexplored. When you cultivate a willingness to fail, you empower yourself to leave your comfort zone and experiment with new actions that potentially are more effective at fulfilling your why. You can develop this willingness to fail, by practicing bringing up mental courage and overcoming initial resistance by choosing to take cold showers rather than comfortable hot showers. This active daily choice will build up your mental courage to try new things, fail, but improve in the process of doing so.
Answering HOW requires Meta Learning because once you have decided what purpose you want to fulfill and what action is most effective in fulfilling it, you should become more effective and accomplishing that action. To do so requires you to experiment with many new methods and meta learning will improve your ability to fearlessly generate new ideas, rapidly implement them, and quickly develop relevant skills.
How is this different than Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle?
Before I get into that, I want to preface that I drafted the idea for the article before I read Simon’s book and was ecstatic when he verbalized a very similar model, but felt that I had a different spin that I wanted to share. Simon’s golden circle starts with WHY, which is encircled by HOW, and is surrounded by WHAT. The WHY is the reasoning, the HOW is the systematic differentiation, and the WHAT is the physical product that companies end up producing to embody their WHY. Simon’s golden circle is tailored to companies which sell goods and services, with an emphasis on the goods as the WHAT. Apple, for instance, markets their WHY as challenging the status quo, they do this by making their product beautifully designed, simple to use, and user friendly (HOW), this is manifested in their products like the iPhone, Mac, and iPad (WHAT). My advice is catered towards individuals who do not necessarily produce a product as a WHAT, but are pursuing a calling as their WHAT. It’s a small change reordering WHY HOW WHAT to WHY WHAT HOW, but I think figuring out WHAT you find meaningful to pursue should be prioritized over HOW you go about accomplishing the WHAT. If I were to apply my thinking to Apple, the WHY would still be to challenge the status quo, the WHAT would be their products such as iPhone, Mac, and VR/AR glasses (coming soon hopefully), and their HOW would be the specific design, engineering, and manufacturing choices they make to optimally accomplish their WHAT (creating a phenomenal user experience & generating high revenue) that fulfills their WHY (empowering the individual to challenge the status quo through technology products).