A North Star

What drives you through life 🌟

I really miss having a North Star.

This morning I woke up flat, even after a good night of sleep. I got moving into my morning routine, but still felt the lag. I have work: meetings, follow-ups, and deliverables. But there is a driving force that feels missing most days. I can usually muster enough juice to get through the day with my relationships, personal and professional goals, or routine... but it’s not the same as the magnetic pull of a North Star.

I’ve had two firm ones in my adult life: Triathlon and Primary (the coworking space I cofounded).

With triathlon, I spent a huge amount of my time coordinating and planning workouts…sometimes more than I actually spent training in them. Then came the socializing afterward, grabbing a bite with whoever from the group was around. I’d go to bed genuinely giddy. My weekends were built entirely around training blocks and race logistics. Waking up to train and coach, grabbing a quick breakfast and heading out the door. I was moving and grooving, and it was an easy flow.

With Primary, there was so much momentum in just operating a living, breathing business that I got sucked into every part of it. I’ve never been pulled into anything else quite that way before. A job is certainly a North Star for many people, whether they own the business or not.

But the wild thing about both of these defining pieces of my life is that I didn’t exactly pick them to be my main focus. I decided to help start a business with my then-wife and our friend Danny, and a crazy ride ensued. Both just pulled me in and had a natural life cycle. I could’ve kept going in either case, but there were logical ends to each…or maybe a transition away is a better description.

Over the last five years, I had a great job with Wix and a mix of consulting with different startups and projects, but nothing has been that singular driving force. Mornings like this present plain evidence for me. There hasn’t been a North Star underneath the work, and I don’t know what the next one is going to be; even now, even while I’m actively trying things, including an interesting community health project I keep circling back to.

The “find your passion, find your purpose” advice is abundant, and it’s worth noting that it’s a fairly recent idea. Most people throughout history didn’t ask what their North Star was. They did the work in front of them because it needed doing. The passion framing shows up more in our modern culture, one where our job is supposed to double as our identity and our personal brand. That’s a useful narrative if you’re trying to get people to work harder, or maybe sell a course on finding purpose. It’s less useful if you’re just trying to figure out how to get through a Tuesday.

There is an interesting study around this worth mentioning. Patrick Hill and Nicholas Turiano used data from MIDUS, a study that followed adults for 14 years, and looked at mortality rates. They measured purpose with a specific survey item: how much people agreed with statements like “some people wander aimlessly through life, but I am not one of them.” People who scored higher lived longer.

That link held up even after controlling for other measures of well-being, like how positive people generally felt and how good their relationships were. It wasn’t just that purposeful people were happier people in general. It also didn’t matter whether someone was retired, which is notable because a lot of earlier purpose research assumed purpose had to come directly from a traditional job.

What that study actually measured wasn’t “did you pick the right goal.” It was “Are you wandering aimlessly or not?” I really appreciate that distinction since it correlates so closely with my previous experience and my current feeling.

I didn’t pick triathlon or Primary in advance, and I’m not going to pick the next thing out of a hat. I’m trying things out without expecting to know yet which one it’s going to be, or if it’s going to be any of them at all.

What’s your North Star right now, and do you feel like you actually picked it, or did it pull you in?

Photo by Mike Setchell on Unsplash