{"id":1225,"date":"2021-03-30T08:22:36","date_gmt":"2021-03-30T08:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/?p=1225"},"modified":"2021-03-30T08:22:42","modified_gmt":"2021-03-30T08:22:42","slug":"rule-1-clarify-your-purpose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/2021\/03\/30\/rule-1-clarify-your-purpose\/","title":{"rendered":"Rule 1: Clarify your purpose"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by Smart on Unsplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of the wonderful aspects of western society is that if you\u2019re willing to work and have acquired a decent set of relevant skills, you can always find a way to make a living. I\u2019m sure that there are exceptions, but I believe that, by and large, this actually is the case for many of us. Once you get to that point, the question becomes what you want to work on. What\u2019s the work that feels worthwhile to spend your life energy on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many answers in our culture, including making a ton of \nmoney, having a career that leaves others in awe or finding ways to get \ninto the public eye so that you can build a reputation. Others view work\n as a necessary evil that we should spend as little time on as possible.\n Instead, we should look for ways to minimize the time allocated to work\n and spend time on other activities, which may include recreation or \nvolunteering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During most of the bigger vacations, such as summer and around \nChristmas, I often meet people who are incredibly happy to be away from \nwork for a while. When you probe a little, the way many talk about their\n job, colleagues and responsibilities isn\u2019t very positive. The vacation \nis viewed as an escape from the \u201cliving hell,\u201d as someone called it, or \nthe \u201cprison\u201d that I heard others refer to. I often wonder why one would \nstay in a position that one clearly hates or isn\u2019t satisfied with. Why \nnot choose a life that you don\u2019t want to escape from?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That brings me to the first rule for thriving in a digital world: \nclarify your purpose. We\u2019re all driven by a set of extrinsic and a set \nof intrinsic motivators. The extrinsic motivators are those that give \nsome form of external reward, ie a form of reward-driven behavior. Your \nintrinsic motivation comes purely from within and doesn\u2019t expect an \nexternal reward. Conducting the work brings its own reward because it \naligns with your values, your purpose and what you experience as \nmeaningful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After I left academia to spend close to a decade in industry, in \nseveral vice-president level roles, I worked more hours than I had ever \ndone in my life before that. Nonetheless, I couldn\u2019t stop writing \nresearch articles. I kept at it during late evenings, weekends and \nvacations and even though my productivity dropped dramatically from when\n I was in academia, I still managed to publish 4-6 papers per year. I \nrealized that writing research papers is my way of making sense of \ncomplex, chaotic topics and I relish the intrinsic reward of creating \nmodels or frameworks that help me understand and create order in the \nchaos. One of my intrinsic motivations is to use research to create \nnovel insights and share those with others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From this experience, I learned that I was unable to clarify my \npurpose and intrinsic motivation by sitting in an ivory tower and \nreasoning through things. I had to actively experiment with different \nroles, activities and contexts to experience what works for me and gives\n me energy and what works less well and drains the life out of me. Some \npeople figure out early in life what they want to focus their life on, \nbut many are less clear. My advice to those is to experiment more. You \ncan\u2019t figure out what your purpose is by sitting in a chair and \nthinking. You have to go out there and do stuff. As Steve Jobs said in \nthe closing of his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford: stay hungry; \nstay foolish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reason why I believe that clarifying your purpose is so important\n in a digital world is threefold. First, the competition is, in many \nways, much tougher as we\u2019re all connected in a global network. Rather \nthan competing with the others in your village, town or city, you\u2019re now\n competing at a world level. As the saying goes, if you\u2019re one in a \nmillion in China (or India, for that matter), there are still a thousand\n people just as good as you. To be successful, you need to operate at \nthe top of your abilities. And you won\u2019t be able to do that unless \nyou\u2019re completely aligned towards the work. That only happens if you\u2019re \nintrinsically motivated and 100 percent in the game, which requires \nalignment with your purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, digitalization allows for the automation of not just \nblue-collar work but even more so of white-collar work. ML\/DL models are\n already better at diagnosing medical images than radiologists. NLP \nalgorithms are better at scanning documents than lawyers. \nAutonomous-drive algorithms already are better than most drivers in all \nbut a very small set of situations and soon will surpass humans in all \ncontexts. The consequence is that every job or task that\u2019s repetitive \nand can be described in a process will be automated. The repetition \nallows for the generation of data that ML\/DL models need for training \nand the process will give a basic structure for algorithms to operate \nin. To stay relevant, you need to put your energy into the tasks that \nrequire all of your human skills and abilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The third reason is concerned with self-actualization. Maslov\u2019s \npyramid is a well-known framework for reasoning about this and once the \nbasics are in place, which is the case for most of us, the focus is and \nshould be on growing as a human being and as a professional into your \nfull potential. Anything less than that is a waste of human life energy.\n That requires you to understand in which directions you\u2019d like to grow \nand then take ownership of that journey and not allow excuses, such as \nblaming others, to get in the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe that all of us have come into this life to accomplish \nsomething. Something that will leave the world in a better place after \nyou shuffle off this mortal coil. Everyone I meet wants their life to \nhave meant something. For all but the lucky few, however, we don\u2019t wake \nup one morning with a completely clear understanding of our purpose. It \nrequires active exploration and, at some point, choosing a purpose that,\n based on your best understanding of your intrinsic motivators and what \nyou experience as meaningful, is your best approximation. That purpose \nmight change over time, but at least, for a while, you have a north star\n to sail by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My professional purpose in life is to help accelerate the adoption of\n digital technologies in the software-intensive industry. I believe that\n technology, by and large, is a force for good in the world and solely \nresponsible for the amazing progress that humanity has made over the \nlast century or more. At this point in time, digital technologies are \nthe most important technologies as they hold so much unexploited \npotential. For all the criticism of large corporations, it\u2019s companies \nthat bring technologies to market and through that create the associated\n societal benefits. So, where I can help accelerate the introduction of \nnew technologies into our society by industry, I help improve the \nquality of life for humankind and help reduce unnecessary human \nsuffering. And this professional purpose is why I chose to run Software \nCenter, why I\u2019m on the board of several companies and why I invest in \nstartups. To the best of my understanding, at this moment, this is the \nbest use of my time and energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I realize that some or even many may completely disagree, but it was \nnever the intention to convince you of my purpose. The goal is to \nconvince me<\/em> of my purpose and it works for me to guide my \nactions and how I allocate my time. And, believe me, coming to this \npoint and being able to clarify my purpose to myself took me many, many \nyears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My challenge to you is to clarify the purpose you choose for your life. What actions are you taking to that end? And if you even have the slightest spiritual side to you, what\u2019s the reason that you\u2019re here, in this life, and are you living up to that purpose? In a world where the opportunities are seemingly infinite, you need direction to ensure that you\u2019re using your time and energy in the best way possible so that when you come to the end of your life, you can be satisfied with how you\u2019ve used that amazing gift of life. As Robert Byrne famously said: the purpose of life is to live a life of purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get more insights earlier, sign up for my newsletter at <\/em>jan@janbosch.com<\/em><\/a> or follow me on<\/em> janbosch.com\/blog<\/em><\/a>, LinkedIn (<\/em>linkedin.com\/in\/janbosch<\/em><\/a>), Medium<\/a> or Twitter (<\/em>@JanBosch<\/em><\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the wonderful aspects of western society is that if you\u2019re willing to work and have acquired a decent set of relevant skills, you can always find a way to make a living. I\u2019m sure that there are exceptions, but I believe that, by and large, this actually is the case for many of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1225"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1227,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225\/revisions\/1227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}