I think for dramatic effect, you should listen to this (on Spotify) as you read.
Ready? Let’s go.
I’m going to assume the first thought you had about this piece is that it is for how to design purpose, for yourself, as an individual. Well, yes and no. Yes because there are learnings to take from this - I guess - and apply into your personal life but no because I’m not that much of an expert on being a person. I legit started this piece with a Dragon Ball image and a playlist of Enya’s best work.
Anyway, let’s start with a question: what the fuck is purpose?
Purpose is intention that may or may not be defined, rational, or clearly stated however, the end goal sort of makes sense. Now I use “sort of” here because a number of you are total pessimists. Do better.
So yeah, purpose is going to the market and getting groceries to cook with - though you have zero idea what to prepare, when you will do it or if you won’t just order take out immediately you get home. Purpose is that you are hungry and hunger, as we all know, has to be satisfied.
Let’s bring more context. As someone who runs a business, it is very bad of you to base your business’s purpose on something as trivial as “solving cross-border payments in Africa”. Nobody truly really and frankly gives a fuck about that. If any it’s not much, but if you say your purpose as a business is to “connect people across Africa one transfer at a time, at 2x the speed of regular banks”, you can see how perspective is shifted clearly to accommodate whatever strengths you have, the specific niche you’re in and the exact problem you’re solving.
In one statement you have identified the hunger and how you plan to quench it. This stimulates the question: “with what?” - and that’s your cue to sell your business model or your technology.
It’s a lot to take in at once, when you can’t seem to figure out what your business does or even what you do, but you are very sure you want to do something!
What you do is design purpose; and funny as it may sound the more clueless you are the better. This isn’t to excuse bad behaviour and say cluelessness means genius, lmao. You will fail. Hopelessly.
What I mean is to design purpose, you must ask a few questions:
who is hungry? (This question aims to find specific people facing specific problems)
why are they hungry? (are they tired, stressed, anxious, sad, etc. This doesn’t apply only literally.)
where do they get food from now? (what solutions are in place for them currently?)
Nothing else really. Once you have these questions answered, there will be some clarity of thought and a sense (but not all) of purpose will come to you.
So if you do decide to cluelessly bounce around as you build your business, you may not exactly fail or win but you’ll be okay enough. Haha.