Finding Your Purpose While Stuck at Home – yourImpact Matrix
It’s a difficult time for everyone. Millions are getting sick with Covid-19, with the most vulnerable particularly affected. Millions have lost their jobs or their businesses. Millions are now out of school with many not able to access online classes. The pandemic is exacerbating many of the systemic challenges we need to solve – the skills gap, the digital divide, the lack of investment in mental health, and so much more, while millions are protesting to demand we uphold a truth that should be self-evident: Black Lives Matter.
The challenges the world faces are not ones we can ignore, and leave to the next generation. They are no longer distant in time or in space, if they ever were, and they are all inter-related.
While we anxiously wait for a vaccine, many of us who are not essential workers are stuck at home. And this is a good time to reflect on our purpose, and how we can do good in our lives towards these intractable challenges.
So what is your purpose?
Or put otherwise, what is the problem you are trying to solve?
Can you express it clearly in terms of your vision, mission, and values?
This is not an easy question – and for many, it could take years or even a lifetime to answer.
In a sense that is good, perhaps a life well-lived is one where you are constantly asking yourself: ‘What is my purpose?’.
Let’s distinguish purpose from passion - I like Nathalie Molina Nino’s book Leapfrog and her thoughts that passion is for trust fund kids who have too much time and money on their hands. She recommends instead finding problems you want to punch. Write down lists of things you want to punch day after day and find the one(s) that other people want to punch too – that’s the start of a new entrepreneurial venture.
I would say to do good in the world and to find your purpose, you need a real problem you want to punch.
But you also want something that is not the marginal headache of the fortunate, but instead a real problem affecting the most marginalized.
So it’s not just that you want to punch this problem – you might hate walking your dog on a cold night in New York or San Francisco, and it’s a real inconvenience for you and your friends when you could use that time to go to the gym instead. You might start a dog walking app based on that.
But let’s face it, that is not a real problem affecting the most marginalized. If on your walk you notice a man who is sleeping on the street in the freezing weather, and you decide to find out more about the issue of homelessness overall, now that is a real problem.
There are a lot of real problems to punch that affect the most underserved.
How might you find your purpose among the sea of injustice, oppression, exploitation, and extraction on which we have built this world?
I would start with your lived experience and really reflect on why you care; why you will stick with this problem day and night, no matter what.
Perhaps this problem has affected you, a family member, a loved one, someone you were close to you in your community. Perhaps it has not, but you can still relate to the lived experience of those who are affected, and this is something that keeps you up at night. And as discussed here, it’s key to know yourself and your superpowers – your skills, experience, and resources, and what you can uniquely bring to solving a problem.
Regardless, you should be ready to listen to, and learn from to those most affected, rather than assume that you will know best, that you will know anything, in fact, even if this is an issue that is deeply personal to you.
The key over time is to find the intersection between real problems that affect the most underserved and your skills and lived experience, what I call yourImpact Matrix, see the graph here:
Thanks to my years as a strategy consultant at the Boston Consulting Group – they burnt the BCG matrix into my mind, but it’s pretty useful I find here.
So - Where do you stand?
Are you the star, the cash cow or the question mark?
The star? Great. Your north star is where your skills and experience intersect with a real problem affecting millions and billions – this is where you need to stay – keep doing what you are doing
The cash cow? Well hopefully you are making lots of money, but what are you doing to do good in the world? Is maximizing your $$$ the measure of your life?
The question mark? Well you have a problem that’s affecting millions and billions but you are lacking the skills and/or experience – is this the right problem for you? And if you still think it is, how do you learn? How do you acquire the skills or experience?
And well if you are in the ‘dog’ category – good to know you are there, but time to start moving – ideally diagonally!
Sometimes a problem you observe and reflect on can take years to form into your purpose, in fact that is likely so you’re lucky if you’re in the star category today. Keep at it even if you have not yet found your purpose. As you stay curious, and listen and learn, you will see a problem come up again, again, and again. You may grow frustrated that it keeps happening and that there does not appear to be a solution, but out of your frustration and the desire to do something about it, your purpose will appear.
