Translating Purpose Into Impact: A Step-By-Step Guide

6 min readJun 1, 2020

As I detailed in a previous post, the most valuable couple of hours I’ve spent so far this year were spent sitting alone, quietly thinking about how I spend my time. More specifically, on whether I was happy spending my time in that way. As a somewhat extroverted guy that spends most of my time building partnerships and brand, this sort of quiet introspection isn’t my usual jam.

At first, this started out as a brain dump. An overwhelmingly unstructured mess. After reading around the topic and finding stories of how people felt about their own purpose I collated a few processes and tweaked them.

In hindsight I’d created a framework to untangle my own thoughts, and since then I’ve felt a greater sense of clarity. Here’s a reconstruction of what I did broken down into just five steps, converted into a template that might help you to distill your purpose and begin enacting it.

Step 1 — Understanding Self

The first step is to take a look back at your life and search for common threads and major themes throughout The intention is to identify what you truly value, what you’re passionate about, and what you’re pretty good at. This establishes a starting point for your roadmap. Here are a few prompts to kickstart your thinking. If you’re stuck, you can always ask someone that’s close to you for their thoughts — they may be able to identify blind spots that you ignore.

Passions

What activity makes you forget everything else in the world, completely distracts you?
What motivationally pulls you rather than pushes you? For instance, personally I’m pulled into playing soccer by have to push myself to go to the gym.
If you were given 2 hours extra a day, what would you do with them?
In the past year, what projects (personal or professional) have you found the most rewarding or fulfilling?

Values

What values do you hold dear? Here’s a list here to get you started — choose 5–10. It doesn’t necessarily have to be who you are right now, but rather who you want to be. These should be intimately personal to you, not what society tells you you should hold dear. Have a think about how you might want people to remember you, what contributions you might have made or what values your role models have.

Your superpowers

What would your closest friend, your mentor, and a close family member say are your greatest qualities?
How do you provide value to others?
What challenges have you faced in life that have shaped who you are today?

Your kryptonite

What aren’t your strongest traits?
If you could delegate any of your tasks and roles to somebody, which ones would they be?

Step 2 — Envisioning The Future

Now visualize your future self. Putting yourself in the role of future you, you can envisage what you want your life to look like and provide something of a rough destination for your roadmap.

Roles

What roles do you visualize yourself playing? Husband, teacher, advocate, friend, entrepreneur, student, creator, traveller are all examples you might want to be identified as.

World

What big changes might affect the world and your place in it? Think societal changes, environmental, technology — huge paradigm shifts. Think about how the world will be, not how it is.

Relationships

Who will help you along your journey and which relationships do you want to invest in?

Assets

What resources (not just money) are critical to funding your purpose? Do you need to create more time to spend with family, build up capital to start a business, get certain qualifications for a new career, build an audience to advocate for something?

Step 3 — Write a Brief Purpose Statement

Now you know where you’re starting and where you want to get to, but the reason for the journey is fuzzy. Your why is missing. Your purpose statement should cover just that - a timeless reminder of who you are and why you do what you do. It should be unique to you, and draw on your experiences, worldview and desires. It should be flexible enough to be applicable for when you’re embodying your different roles in life and wearing different hats.

I keep mine atop my digital to-do list as a constant reminder. Most of all, it should be instantly identifiable as who yours, a natural extension of who you are. Here are some famous ones to give you ideas and if you’re struggling, follow this format: The value you create + who you’re creating it for + the expected outcome.

Richard Branson: “To have fun in my journey through life and learn from my mistakes.”
Oprah Winfrey: “To be a teacher. And to known for inspiring my students to be more than they thought they could be.”
Elon Musk: “If something is important enough you should try, even if the probable outcome is failure.”
Walt Disney: “To make people happy”
Maya Angelou: “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

Step 4 — Enacting Your Purpose

Once you’re conscious of your purpose, it gives you the clarity to act upon it. By now, like the light cast from a lighthouse emerging through the fog, you’re starting to see your desired path more clearly. Now you need to establish how you’re going to get there, the jobs you need to do and the milestones you want to hit.

Break your work down so far into five chunks. Five that encompass the roles that you want to fulfil and those areas that you want to excel in. For instance, perhaps you want to be known as an active person, so you make fitness a bucket (marked as ‘area’ in the template). You want to be a devoted husband and father, so you make family a bucket etc. You want to excel in personal finance, so you make that a bucket.

Then simply set an achievable goal one year, one month, one week from now for each that will move you closer to that future seld you have envisioned. Everyone sets goals and holds themselves accountable in different ways, and I’ll share more about my own methods in the future.

Step 5 — Get Going!

Personally I’m a fan of generating momentum by getting a small win on the board as soon as possible. Momentum is a powerful thing, and so is procrastination. Hopefully, this framework feels empowering. It’s designed to give you some clarity around purpose, and a stronger idea of what you need to do to embody it. Living your purpose takes courage, and it might mean trying something new and stepping out of your comfort zone.

“nothing worth having comes easy.” — Roosevelt

This greater clarity empowers you to say yes to things that progress you towards your vision and, more importantly, to say no to things that don’t.

Final Thoughts

My final thought is that whilst this is a personal exercise, feel free to share your purpose statement or the goals you’ve crafted that align with it. It may sound scary, but you’ll make yourself more accountable by sharing things publicly and you’ll garner support from your friends and others who will help you along this journey.

PS: Part of the reason I’m beginning to write and publish is to get feedback on ideas, expand my thinking, improve my writing, and even meet new people. Well, that and to avoid losing 40 dollars (below). I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic and my virtual door is always open! You can find me on Twitter or email me.

Quite honestly, I’m not sure where this writing experiment will go, but if you want to follow along drop your email here and I’ll let you know when I’m sharing ideas again.