What should I do with my life — purpose worksheet

This worksheet is a companion to the What should I do with my life page. It takes approximately thirty minutes to work through carefully. Writing your answers rather than thinking them tends to produce more honest output.

Part 1: Constraints

Name your actual constraints, specifically and without apology. These are the fixed or semi-fixed edges of your current situation.

Financial: What income do you actually need to meet real obligations in the next twelve months? ___

Geographic: Where do you actually need to be, and what travel/location flexibility do you genuinely have? ___

Time: How many hours per week are realistically available for work beyond current commitments? ___

Relational: What obligations to other people are genuinely real (not imagined or excessive)? ___

Skill and credential: What can you actually do now, at a level that someone would pay for or rely on? ___

Part 2: Energy and skill overlap

Energy: Which types of work leave you with roughly the same or slightly more energy at the end of them?

List up to five: ___

Skill: What do you do noticeably better than most people who have had similar opportunities? Include things you take for granted.

List up to five: ___

Overlap: Looking at both lists, what appears in or near both? ___

Part 3: The attention test

Over the past three months, what have you read, watched, or engaged with beyond what was required — what pulled your attention simply because it interested you?

Look for patterns: ___

What does that pattern suggest about what you genuinely care about? ___

Part 4: Experiments

Looking at the constraints from Part 1, the energy and skill overlap from Part 2, and the attention pattern from Part 3: what is one specific direction that looks like it might have potential?

Write it here: ___

Now design a small experiment: a time-limited, low-stakes test that would give you real information about whether this direction is as good as it appears.

What is the specific experiment? ___

When would you do it? ___

What would count as useful information either way? ___

Part 5: One next action

From everything above: what is one specific action you could take in the next two weeks that would produce useful information about the direction you identified?

Not a plan. One action.

Write it here: ___

The worksheet is most useful when returned to after three to six months — the experiment in Part 4 will have generated data by then, and the constraints and patterns may have shifted enough to make a fresh run-through productive.