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Viktor Frankl's, Man's Search for Meaning, is one of the most intriguing books I've read. The book basically revolves around the idea that humans have an innate, core desire for meaning. In the book, he introduces the concept of the "Sunday neurosis." When people finally pause at the end of the weekend, and have nothing to do, they may experience a sudden sense of meaninglessness. This is a phenomenon that I can relate to.

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But what is meaning? That book doesn't go into detail on how exactly one can find meaning in life. And the elephant-in-the-room question is, "What is Viktor Frankl's meaning?" Turns out Viktor Frankl's meaning in life is to help other people find meaning. How convenient.

But I figured out a simple tool that can help approximate a meaningful life. You simply ask your heart, "is this meaningful?" I found it easy to get reliable answers from my heart.

And so I took an inventory of all possible directions I could take my career, and I put a check-mark next to each one that I found, in my heart, seemed meaningful. Afterward, I then started stacking my work-flow with meaningful projects.

So far so good.

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But then, there were further questions. There was something lacking in my calculation. What makes something meaningful? All I had was a feeling I could tap internally that evaluated a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on meaning. When is something more meaningful than others? And what if my internal judging mechanism is off a little bit?

These problems came to fore when I had two projects that were both meaningful. I found myself naturally favoring one over the other, but I couldn't tell why. Somehow my meaningfulness-measure lacked predictive power.

But now, I think I figured out the extra sauce that makes meaningfulness more... well... meaningful. The extra sauce is "purpose."

If there's anything I got from The Purpose Driven Life, it's this principle:

There can be no meaning without purpose.

Using Sartre's thought experiment in Existentialism Is a Humanism, let's look at the case of the knife. If you were an alien and discovered a knife floating across the universe, what would you think? You'd notice the ridges, you'd notice that it was sharp, and you'd notice that it was connected to a blunt cylindrical portion. But without knowing what the purpose of the knife is, you wouldn't know the meaning of those features. If you knew the knife's purpose--that it's for cutting--then you'd understand that that the ridges are meant for something. Everything about the knife suddenly makes sense. The handle is meant for gripping. The sharp edge is meant for slicing and dicing.

Likewise, if you know what your purpose is, then you'll know the meaning of all of your features. Everything you do finally gets a context. You'll be able to answer the question, "Why was I born talented in this one area, but not so good at this other thing?"

Focusing on the purpose of what you do re-balances and centers your motivations. Every opportunity we encounter will have a completely different composition. One project may pay better, but doesn't use your motivated talents. Or another project may pay less, have less pleasant co-workers, but is related to some life-long dreams you've had. When the number of dimensions start piling up, you need a device to unify the decision-making process. If you know the "why?" of what you're doing, then it puts everything into context. Why do you need money? Why do you need more money? Why do you need to work in such-and-such field? It all depends on purpose.