The Seven Principles · 01 Purpose
Purpose is knowing why you are doing something. It is the reason strong enough to keep you working when progress is slow and it would be easier to stop. It works at two levels: there is the bigger why, the reason you are on this path at all, and there is the purpose of the task in front of you right now. You need both, because the bigger why decides what deserves your effort, and the purpose within the task keeps that effort pointed at the goal while you work.
You work with purpose at both levels. For the goal, you understand your own values and why the goal matters to you, so that you can state the reason underneath your work in your own words. For the task, you decide what the piece of work in front of you is for before you start it, and you check while you work that it is still moving you towards the goal.
It is not the grand version of the question. You do not need an answer to what your purpose in life is before you can work with purpose. The working level is smaller and more practical: why this goal, and what the session in front of you is for.
What does purpose give you?
Purpose gives you clarity and direction. When your purpose is clear, you know what matters and what to prioritise, and your decisions get simpler. Without a reason you can state, your effort becomes mechanical, and mechanical effort is the first thing that gets dropped in challenging times.
The research supports the connection between owning the reason and keeping going. Deci and Ryan, in their work on self-determination theory, found that motivation is more self-sustaining when it comes from your own choice rather than from external pressure. A goal whose reason is genuinely yours is one you are more willing to keep working at through the challenging times.
The bigger why is covered in its own articles: What Drives You looks at where the reason underneath a goal comes from, and Identity Before Goals looks at who is setting it. This article works at the smaller level: the session and the task in front of you.
How do you give a session purpose?
State what the session is for before you begin. The statement can be as plain as: I need to get this piece of work done in this session. When the time is set aside for development rather than delivery, it changes shape: during this session I am focused on this part of my development. One sentence is enough.
The sentence does two jobs. It connects the next block of work to your goal, and it gives you something to check your attention against while you work. This is the same connection that makes weekly planning work: the plan links the week to the goal, and the stated purpose links the session to the plan. A task with a stated purpose is a step on your critical path rather than an item on a list.
How do you keep purpose within the task?
Stating the purpose gets the session started in the right direction. Keeping it present while you work is the part that takes practice, because attention narrows once you are inside a task, and you can lose sight of the reason you started.
The way to keep it present is one question, asked as you work.
Is this actually leading to the goal, or does it just feel productive?
It is easy to get pulled towards what feels productive when you are inside a task: answering messages, polishing what is already good enough, researching past the point of usefulness. Those things give you a sense of progress without requiring the harder piece of work the goal needs. The question lets you catch this while it is still easy to correct, and the stated purpose is what you bring the task back to.
Use the natural breaks to ask it. When you finish a section or a sub-task, take a moment before the next one: is the next piece still what this session is for? Sheeran (2002), reviewing 422 studies of intention and behaviour, found that intention explains about 28 per cent of the variance in what people actually do. Wanting the outcome is not enough on its own. The intention has to be carried into the task while you work, and re-stating the purpose at the natural breaks is a practical way to carry it.
Presence, another of the seven principles, is what lets you give the task your full attention. Purpose adds the direction: it tells you what the attention is for.
Is purpose what is letting you down?
You work with all seven principles at once, and at any point one or two of them will be the ones costing you progress. The cornerstone article sets a check question against each principle. These are the four for purpose, to run against your recent work:
- Is the task in front of me actually leading to the goal, or does it just feel productive?
- Can I say, in my own words, why the goal I am working towards matters to me?
- Do I know what my current session is for?
- When I notice a task no longer connects to the goal, do I change what I am doing or carry on with it?
If purpose is where your answers are weakest, this is the principle to work on first. If the weakness sits with a different principle, the cornerstone covers all seven, each with its own check question.
Go deeper
This article goes deep on one principle. How You Operate Inside the System sets out all seven and how they run through the five conditions.
The two-minute diagnostic scores you across the five conditions and tells you which condition to work on next.
Work out where you are stuck first. If your purpose is clear and the problem sits elsewhere, the two-minute diagnostic scores you across the five conditions and points you to the right next read and tool.
Then read the cornerstone: How You Operate Inside the System →
Start with the free 7-Action PDF. Seven actions drawn from performance psychology research, each one explained, each with a practical exercise. You also get the monthly letter, which applies one idea at a time.
Research referred to above: Deci and Ryan on self-determination theory, and Sheeran (2002) on intention and behaviour. The full system, with all sources, is in the manifesto. To put the principle to work, the Personal Performance Charter is built for exactly that: a single page recording what you believe, the values you perform by, and who you are at your best.