When you hear purpose, when I say it at the beginning of the episodes of this show, you probably have some kind of preconceived notion of what exactly that is. In today's episode, I want to help you demystify purpose. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. You're listening to Developer Tea. My goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and indeed purpose in their careers. And purpose is a word that has been kind of co-opted. It has been overloaded to mean something that for the sake of this show, I want to strip away to some degree. I use purpose as a word because it is a powerful force once you can tap into it, right, but it's not mystical. It's not something that you find in a moment of epiphany necessarily. Some people might, but purpose, as far as this show is concerned, is a functional thing. Purpose is something that you can use. purpose is something that you can use. purpose is something that you can use. purpose is something that you can use. can use as a tool in your career. And so I want to give you one direct way when you ask yourself, what is the purpose? What is the purpose of my career? Or even a bigger question, what is the purpose of my life? I want to give you a tool to zone in a bit on what your purpose is. And here's the thing. If you came to this episode thinking, I'll finally get to know who I am. I want to take a step back from that a little bit because purpose, as we mentioned already, is a functional thing. The whole point, right? The whole point of having a purpose or clarifying your purpose, understanding what it is, is to give you a connection, a connection from your actions to some outcome. That's it. Your purpose is a connection to some actions you are taking to some outcome that you want to create. Now, it's very important to not misunderstand me here. When I say an outcome, I don't necessarily mean a concrete outcome every time. Somebody's purpose in life could be something relatively abstract. That outcome could be something relatively abstract. But if you understand your purpose, then you have an answer to the question of why are you doing what you are doing? And this is, when we talk about purpose, we're talking about kind of an answer to that question from a zoomed out perspective, right? Why are you a programmer? Or why are you working in the field that you're working in? But interestingly, purpose gives us the motivation, even though we may not be able to draw the clearest direct line between our individual atomic actions and our ultimate purpose. If we were to sit down and do that exercise, a highly clarified purpose would allow us to do that. So here's what I want you to understand about purpose. The tool I want to give you is the tool of looking at today. What is your purpose? Purpose today. Now, this is kind of a simple clarifying mechanism. It does two things. One, it reinforces the fact that purpose is not a static concept. Your reason for doing something can change over time. This is not something that you necessarily have to attach to a static identity. In fact, believing that your identity must be static in the first place, may actually lead you to believe that purpose is a more difficult to grasp concept or something that you have to commit to for your whole life. I want you to start thinking about your purpose at a smaller scale first. What is my purpose today? And then upon reflection, if you do that for a day or a week, maybe you can zoom out to what is my purpose for this week. And eventually, you can get to the next step. And then you can start thinking about your purpose at a smaller scale. Your purpose for the month. And then go on from there to whatever degree that you would like to go to. But importantly, on reflection of yesterday, right? If you do this exercise today, tomorrow, you can look back and say, why did I care about that thing? Why did I care? Why did I make that my purpose yesterday? And does it stay as my purpose for today? And this brings up an interesting concept that you can begin to apply as you explore this more thoroughly. And that is the idea of an evolutionary purpose as compared to the idea of a momentary purpose. An evolutionary purpose might be pointing at or reflective of some goals that you have or the legacy that you want to leave. Something that's changing over time. And you can look back and say, why did I care about that? Why did I make that change? Why did I make that change? Why did I make that change? Why did I make that change? You want your actions to enable that change. Your purpose reflects some agency in making change a reality. But you may also, even simultaneously, have a momentary purpose. The idea here is that we're not looking to the future. We're not looking to the past. We're not trying to create some roadmap for change. But rather, we're paying attention to who we are, how we're expressing our selves in the moment today. A momentary purpose might be expressed as something like, my purpose is to be the kindest that I can be. For some people, it's easier to identify their evolutionary purpose, their long-term purpose, where they want to end up at the end of their career, than it is to identify their momentary purpose. And for others, it's exactly the opposite. You might also identify a purpose that's somewhere in the middle as the easiest thing to identify. Whatever it is, start there. Start with the thing that you know. Start with figuring out why you care about that thing. What is it about that particular purpose that you're attracted to? And move outward from there. You can treat purpose like your favorite music album. It might be something that stays with you for years, or it might be something that gets replaced next year. You can treat purpose like your favorite music album. It might be something that gets replaced next week. There's nobody around to judge you and say that that's wrong. As you begin to develop clarity around your purpose, you can begin to also string together what this means about you. Through purpose, you may be able to unearth your values, or maybe vice versa. Maybe you know the things that you care about, the things that you value, but you're not really sure exactly what that means for the actions in your life. These two things kind of go hand in hand. You can't really know what that means for the actions in your life. Go back and forth and feed each other. We're likely going to return to the topic of purpose. Of course, that is the underlying reason that this show exists, is to help you clarify yours, and to continue kind of cascading that down for you to help others clarify theirs. That's the ultimate, one of the ultimate goals of the show. In the future, we will certainly talk about purpose, but we may do a little bit more of this unraveling of the complexity of purpose. So that you can apply this more practically. So you can have a functional working part that helps you understand why you take the actions that you take on a day-to-day basis. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Developer Tea. This show would not exist without you. I am incredibly grateful for all of you who listen to this. I hope that I am helping you clarify your purpose, whatever it is, and find that clarity and perspective in your careers. If you're enjoying this show, there's two things I'd like you to do. One, leave a review in whatever podcasting platform you use. Of course, the big ones have the biggest effect. Second, join the Developer Tea Discord community. You can head over to developertea.com slash discord to join today. It's totally free. And really all that is, is a great place for you to come and share your ideas, reflections on the things that we talk about here, reflections on your career that have nothing to do with any topic. All of that is welcome. That's developertea.com slash discord. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea.