"What should I work on? What's my passion or purpose?"

Existential questions, I know. We struggle with it. I don't deny "purpose" or the importance of it. It is what keeps us going in tougher times. But what's a better mental model to think about it? Something that doesn't seems so daunting. Like 'figuring out some magical passion' that I am supposed to have been born with?

When they say purpose or passion, what they are really referring to is this - what do you really care about?

Let that be the north star and let it guide you, instead of going for the next shiny object.

Let's apply this to business -

Anyone who has the experience of running a business would tell you that there are two main parts to it - Product/Service and Distribution.

Product/Service is the thing that you want to sell. Distribution is access to people who would buy your product.

Care

Care about something or someone deeply and you will be motivated to serve those people the best, resulting in a really good product.

E.g. - I strongly care about the planet being sustainable. Depending on my skillset and risk appetite, I could take on challenges ranging from - building a business that makes it easier to plant trees to building efficient batteries/renewable sources, etc.

E.g. - I strongly care about pets. Find problems of pet owners and solve them - ranging from clothing for pets to training for pets or whatever.

E.g. - I strongly care about more people starting their own small online businesses. I should think - Can I build tools to make this happen? Or can I educate and build a community around it (indiehackers.com)?

If you care about a certain thing or a group of people you will feel compelled to reach out to them, to talk to them, understand their pain points and what kind of solution they are looking for etc. You would then be driven to figure out a way to solve it by building a really good service or product.

Answer this, what do you really care about?

Share

Share about it widely so that people that you want to help can discover and use your magical product, resulting in distribution.

Because your aim is really to just help people, you will feel compelled to create helpful content. Share your journey, share your ideas, the benefits that people have gotten from your product, why do you care about this cause etc. Sharing about a particular cause, as they say niche, connects you with other people, building your audience. This is the core of modern marketing.

Just caring is not enough, you have to share. Sharing gives us joy, isn't that what we are taught when we are kids?

---

When we don't care about what we are working on we struggle with problems like not finding meaning from our work, not accessing the flow state etc.

It really is that simple. Strongly care about something and share. You can apply this care and share model to relationships and life in general. Really just care about something deeply.

People participate in revolutions because they deeply care about it, they bring people together for a cause.

A good way to sum it up is this -

The world is going through many revolutions at the same time. Which revolution do you want to participate in?