Purpose & Agency · Lesson 2 of 2

Define success for yourself

Describe success in your own concrete terms, and revisit it.

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If you don't define success, someone else will — an employer, a feed, an algorithm. Their definition rarely fits your life.

Try describing a good year in concrete terms: who you spend time with, what you are proud of making, how you feel on an ordinary Tuesday. That picture is more useful than a job title.

Revisit it. Purpose is not a single discovery; it is a direction you keep adjusting as you grow.

See it happen

You are asked in an interview where you want to be in five years, and you hear yourself give an answer you do not particularly believe.

The read that arrives on its own

It is a standard question with a standard answer, so the borrowed one does the job.

The same situation, with this idea

That evening you write what a good ordinary Wednesday looks like three years out: when it starts, who is in it, what the work is, what you are no longer doing. It is far less impressive than the interview answer and considerably more useful.

What changed

The borrowed answer described a position. The ordinary Wednesday describes a life, and it is specific enough to hold a real decision against — does this job, this course, this move point towards that Wednesday or away from it?

The takeaway

Describe success in your own concrete terms, and revisit it.

Easy to take the wrong way

Writing the description once and filing it. It is meant to be revisited and edited, and changing it is not failing at it — a definition you have never revised is usually one you stopped consulting a while ago.

Try this

Write a short description of a good ordinary day three years from now.