More thoughtleadership from the Scott Galloway podcast: am I being radicalised or something. I don’t like getting all of my Insight from one source. What a smart media-critical guy I am.

Anyway, recent episode with Suzy Welch, talking about values and how to help people figure out what to do with their lives.

Define purpose. Like what, if someone says, I haven't found my purpose, how do you dissect what that actually means?

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The way I define it is that your purpose is at the intersection of your values… your aptitudes… and then the areas of economic growth that call you intellectually or emotionally.

I think that lines up pretty well with what I’m doing now at the NHS: helping people is one of my values, programming is one of my aptitudes (maybe my only aptitude!), and… well I suppose software development is economically viable but maybe at the NHS it’s not quite as profitable as it could be elsewhere.

Welch also talks about how “happiness is not a goal, it’s an outcome” of doing something meaningful (to you) with your life. Happiness comes and goes but it’s very difficult to hold on to and it’s totally contingent on a bunch of other stuff in your life that you don’t have any control over. Not an end to work towards but something incidental that happens when you’re living meaningfully (i.e. at the intersection of values/aptitudes/MUNNY). Or when you’re eating Skittles.