The Purpose Compass
Six short modules, grounded in research on flow, contribution, conditioning and meaning at work. Each one produces a concrete signal, not a vague feeling. At the end you get a purpose statement, a gap score, and a clear read on which of your current commitments actually fit.
Your first name
Optional. Personalises your results and your downloaded report.
Whose voice is this, really?
Most people's sense of purpose is buried under decades of other people's expectations. This module clears some of that noise before you go looking.
Before anyone paid you for it, graded you on it, or told you that you were good at it — what did you love doing as a child?Optional
Go back as far as you can. Small and ordinary counts. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's original flow research was built partly on watching children lose themselves in unselfconscious play — before performance or reward entered the picture.
Whose voice do you hear loudest when you make a big career decision?Optional
Self-Determination Theory calls values you have absorbed from others but never truly examined "introjected" — they feel like your own, but they were installed. Select every voice that applies.
How much of your current career direction did you actually choose, versus inherit or fall into?Required
Three moments you felt most alive
Not achievements — moments. Times you felt fully absorbed, proud, or exactly where you were meant to be. They do not need to be work-related.
Moment oneOptional
What were you doing? Who else was involved, if anyone?
Moment twoOptional
A different kind of moment — earlier or later in life, a different setting.
Moment threeOptional
The one that surprised you most when you thought of it.
What made these moments matter?Required
Select every tag that fits across all three. Be honest rather than aspirational. Choose at least one.
What would genuinely be lost
William Damon's Stanford research defines purpose as needing two things: personal meaning and consequence beyond yourself. This module tests the second half.
If you stepped away from your current work tomorrow, what specifically would people lose?Optional
Not "they'd miss me" — the actual value that would go missing.
Who relies on that contribution?Optional
How replaceable does this contribution feel?Required
Honestly — could someone else do exactly what you do, exactly this way?
What replenishes you, what drains you
Rate each activity by energy after doing it — not skill level. Pleasure tends to deplete; purpose-aligned work tends to replenish, even when it is hard.
Optional — rate as many as feel relevant. Unrated activities are simply left out of your energy signature.
Choose your top five values
Pick the five that matter most to you right now, not the five that sound best.
Select exactly fiveRequired
0 of 5 selected
What's actually on your plate
List up to six things currently taking your time and energy — roles, projects, responsibilities. For each, be honest about whether it serves what you have just told us matters.
Your Purpose Compass reading
Illustrative directions, not a career test. People with your dominant driver are often drawn to work shaped like this.
Edit freely — this is a first draft, built from your own answers, not a template.
This is the raw material. The work is closing the gap.
A one-off diagnostic tells you where you stand. Coaching is where the gap between your stated values and your actual week actually closes — without burning out to get there.
- Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning — logotherapy and purpose through service, love, and one's stance toward suffering
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi — research on flow and absorbed, matched-challenge work
- William Damon, Stanford Center on Adolescence — purpose as personal meaning plus consequence beyond the self
- Edward Deci & Richard Ryan — Self-Determination Theory, on autonomy, competence and relatedness
- Steve Jobs, Stanford commencement address, 2005 — on separating your own voice from inherited expectation
Full references are included in your downloaded report.