I had dinner with a friend tonight and she told me a profound, true story that I had to share (names changed to protect their privacy).

Her boyfriend Evan was born without one leg from mid-thigh down. As he was born with the condition, his body has compensated incredibly. His remaining leg is about twice the size of a normal leg (in muscle mass) and he has an extremely strong lower back which has kept his back straight. He uses a basic prosthetic limb to get around more easily, but is fully mobile.

The crazy thing is that when he was born, the baby born in the bed next to him had the exact same condition. The doctor told both sets of parents about a potential procedure that would allow their children the chance to walk normally again. The procedure involved a series of operations that would try to make the leg grow out properly. Evan’s parents, I quote, said “don’t worry we’ll just stick a bit of plastic on the end of his leg and he’ll be fine”. Ann’s parents (the parents of the other baby) decided to go for the procedure of leg operations.

This led to a fascinating micro-experiment. The two families stayed in touch for many years after. This meant that they actually saw the ‘clinical’ results of the two different paths, and the effects this had on each child’s life.

Sadly, the procedure of leg operations was unsuccessful for Ann. She has ended up in a wheelchair because she spent so much time in hospital as a small child that her body didn’t learn to compensate for the missing limb. Evan, on the other hand, is a paralympic hope for sailing, works in a top recruitment firm and lives happily with his girlfriend – a very normal/fulfilling life.

Everyone on this planet is born into their own unique set of circumstances. This combination of genetics and environment, nature and nurture, develops us along our own individual journeys into our own particular characters.

In Evan’s case, his parents embraced who he was and allowed him the freedom to develop in his unique way. Ann’s parents tried to change her, tried to change the cards she was dealt by nature, and it failed.

The decisions we make can lead to different chain reactions of events that take us down entirely different journeys. This is not just true for decisions made for/by us when we’re young, but continuously applies to the decisions we make on a daily basis for the entirety of our lives. This is a terrifying fact of nature, but one we must consider and embrace. It can be hard to know what is the right choice to make. Fortunately, we can prepare for these decisions. We must define our values. The values we hold close act as our compass to making these decisions. Define in advance what resonates with you: Do you value empathy or brutal honesty? Humility or bravada? Acceptance or intolerance? Risk or security? These things can help guide us to make even the hardest decisions.

For me, the key takeaway is: Embrace who you are and trust your values.

I had some profound realisations last night. I thought I’d got my head around this whole life thing, but I hadn’t. After some deep intrinsic questioning and rapid cramming of research I can finally say that I’ve got a conclusion I’m 100% satisfied with.

I first started making real progress on the meaning of life when I read Ryan Allis’ “Lessons from my 20s” and decided to find my purpose. I concluded my purpose or ‘meaning for life’ was the following:

To put 100% of myself and my effort into building immense value for humanity

I was very pleased with myself, and felt a moment of total clarity. This made so much sense to me. What’s the point of being alive, if you aren’t using your life to the absolute max to create societal value?

But my purpose met its first altercation when I reached out to a pseudo-mentor of mine, Jan Sramek, and asked him what was the most important thing that he learnt since writing his best-selling book “Racing Towards Excellence“. What stuck with me in his response was:

“People matter — find the ones who get you and work/spend time with them.”

I started to follow this advice, focusing on getting depth, meaning and breadth in my relationships, and quickly made a slight modification to my purpose…

To put 100% of myself and my effort into building immense value for humanity and connections that matter

In hindsight, I can see this was getting a little convoluted now. How can I say putting 100% of myself into two very different things? How do I split the 100%?

Despite this modification, it felt like there was still something missing.

I started my most recent venture, Artifix, on the premise that it’s at the intersection between my passion and my expertise. Artificial intelligence is my passion, problem solving in IT is my expertise. It felt like an epiphany. Now to be aligned with my purpose, I would commit 100% to this and work on it day in, day out. A week or two went by and I had made some progress, but nothing close to what I was capable of. I felt deflated. In my head, I was doing everything right. Living with purpose. Why wasn’t this motivating me to perform like it should? I had my “why“, wasn’t that all that mattered?

Somewhere in finding the meaning of life, I had gone wrong.

I had my first philosophical thoughts about life aged 11 on holiday with my family. I’ve read dozens of books such as Man’s Search for Meaning, On the Shortness of Life and Drive, had hundreds of conversations about it. All in all, I’ve spent thousands of hours deliberating on this profound question. Which is why it’s so ironic and amusing that what made the pin drop for me was watching Jupiter Ascending (a spectacularly average sci-fi movie…).

For some reason, this changed my perspective on things. In Jupiter Ascending, it turns out planet earth is just a giant farm. Human life was grown on earth by a superior life-form who run the Universe, just so that it could be harvested a few million years later. I.E. One day, the entirety of humanity is set to be wiped out and ‘harvested’.

Imagine that were true, and let it sink in for a moment. One day, some being outside our realm of reality will just flick a switch and that will be it. Our solar system is sucked into some kind of black hole and everything about humanity disappears for ever. What’s more, they’re most likely to flick the switch when the Earth is at it’s peak population, which may well happen in our lifetime. Or it could happen tomorrow.

What is the point of leaving a legacy? Before we’ve even made our legacy, earth might be wiped out. The whole of humanity could be destroyed tomorrow for all we know. What’s the point of creating societal value for humanity? What even is the point of creating any value for ourselves? Meaningful relationships?

And then came the epiphany.

The meaning of life, is to give life meaning.

The meaning of life is not something intellectual or answerable. There is no single meaning to life that fits everyone. In fact, I would argue the opposite. The meaning of life for every single person is unique. Just like their fingerprints or their DNA. The meaning of life isn’t to find a calling or purpose that relates to society as a whole. It’s just to give it whatever meaning you want.

The only place people go wrong with the meaning of life, is that they forget how every single day is valuable. Time, is all you have in life. Whatever you feel like doing in that time, go ahead and do it. Whether it’s sitting on the couch watching Netflix all day, or creating something new in the world. Either is fine if you are satisfied with that. There’s no need to work yourself like a dog, unless that’s what you want to be doing.

This epiphany has taken me full circle. From no meaning, to trying to find meaning, to no (set) meaning again. It gives me peace of mind that as long as I am meticulous with how I spend my time, my life is meaningful.

I choose to pursue creating new things in the world because that is what I like to spend my time doing. I choose to read new books every week because that is what I like to spend my time doing. And I choose to go out for dinner with friends who excite me, because that is what I like to spend my time doing.

What do you spend your time doing?

“It’s better to talk to 2 people ([experts]) than to buy 3 books” said Rytis Vitkauskas, Founder and CEO of YPlan in an interview with Brian Rose on Silicon Real. He’s right. A book may take several hours to read, whilst a 10 minute conversation with the author might teach you their entire concept. However, not every expert gets around to writing a book. People in your everyday life can be mini-experts too. As long as the person you’re talking to has greater expertise and experience than you, you should be able to learn from them.

Getting advice from other people is important for businesses. The leading global startup accelerator programme, Techstars, explain “Mentor Madness” is one of their accelerator’s biggest strengths. In Mentor Madness, startup founders are dumped into dozens of back-to-back meetings with mentors who give them advice on their startup. “Something magical happens when startups are exposed to a big surge in input from helpful individuals” says Keith Hopper, one of the mentors. Techstars has the figures to back this up. The companies they’ve funded are now collectively valued at over $4.4bn. It works.

So it’s really important to get advice. But the biggest challenge is knowing whether it’s good advice or bad advice. When should you take advice on board and when should you ignore it?

Asking for someone’s opinion on something almost always leads to bad advice. Mediocre at best. The problem with opinion is it tends to be vague and diluted in order to soften any harm to your ego. The best advice comes in the form of frameworks and thinking processes. An answer or opinion on something by itself is useless. It may or may not be right, but even if it is right, it only gives you a one-off solution. You haven’t improved your own ability to handle problems like that in future, so the benefit is entirely superficial. There’s that good old proverb:

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

The problem is, giving good advice is really hard. The brain is a summation of neural networks that we train over time. When we complete an action, for example, hitting a tennis ball with a racket, we build circuitry in our brain that allows us to repeat the action. The more we practice, the better the circuitry and the better we are at completing that action. But neural networks work like a black-box system. Over time, we build a system for handling input stimulus (tennis ball coming your way) to desired output action (hit the tennis ball back with the racket). The process for getting from input to output exists, but we don’t consciously understand it. It’s physically locked into our neurons. This is why it’s so hard to articulate and explain to someone how to hit a ball, without demonstrating the act itself.

It turns out there’s a nifty trick to getting great advice. An advice request is typically structured by explaining the problem you’re having, what your possible options are and asking the advisor which they think is best. You hope that they’ll recall all the similar situations and problems they’ve encountered in the past and somehow use this to give you the most insightful and helpful answer possible. But this is falling into a trap! You’re asking for an opinion and cornering your advisor.

The solution, rather, is to ask as follows: “How would you think about X?”.

For example, let’s say you’re looking to raise investment for your startup and you’re not sure whether you should be raising from angel investors, VCs, raising a seed round, raising a series A, etc.. Rather than specifically asking “should I raise from angel investors or VCs? Should it be seed or series A?”, instead ask “How would you think about raising investment for this business?”. The difference is subtle, but key. I guarantee the answer you get will be 100x more valuable. It’s all in the way you ask.

In this way, rather than going after a fish, you can get an education on how to fish. Unlocking how your advisor thinks, rather than what, is the key to getting outstanding advice that you can learn from. Instead of just solving your problem today, they’ll give you a framework for solving the 10 other similar problems you might face down the road.

An American businessman took a vacation to a small coastal Mexican village on doctor’s orders. Unable to sleep after an urgent phone call from the office the first morning, he walked out to the pier to clear his head. A small boat with just one fisherman had docked, and inside the boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish.

“How long did it take you to catch them?” the American asked.

“Only a little while,” the Mexican replied in surprisingly good English.

“Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” the American then asked.

“I have enough to support my family and give a few to friends,” the Mexican said as he unloaded them into a basket.

“But… What do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican looked up and smiled. “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Julia, and stroll into the village each evening, where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, señor.”

The American laughed and stood tall. “Sir, I’m a Harvard M.B.A. and can help you. You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. In no time, you could buy several boats with the increased haul. Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats.” He continued, “Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village, of course, and move to Mexico City, then to Los Angeles, and eventually New York City, where you could run your expanding enterprise with proper management.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, señor, how long will all this take?”

To which the American replied, “15-20 years. 25 tops”.

“But what then, señor?”

The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions”.

“Millions, señor? Then what?”

“Then you would retire and move to a small coastal fishing village, where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos…”

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I love this parable. It reminds us that money should not be the goal in itself. It is a tool and component in the lifestyle we design for ourselves. The sweet spot lies in focusing on how you spend your time, not money. Life should be about creating value for society without sacrificing improvement to your own physical, mental, emotional and material well-being.

There’s a well-known thought experiment: “How would you live right now if you knew that you had a disease that was going to kill you?”. You’d probably do a lot of things differently. But guess what, this isn’t just a thought experiment. You DO have a disease that’s going to kill you. You’re going to die. We’re all going to die. Our bodies degenerate day-by-day. At the end of life, is death. When you try to avoid this fact, you stop living. You just let yourself pass through life, slowly but surely, until death. Stop and realise this. Face the facts.

Steve Jobs knew this well:

“I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

You’re probably thinking “wow, this has really made me think”.

So act on it. Do just what Steve Jobs did. You’re perfectly able to; it’s your life. Change something, today.

“Life’s a journey, not a destination”

The well known quote, repeated daily across the world… But is it true?

The 20th century birthed a mantra to treat life as a straight line from birth to ‘the end’. You’re born, you go to school, you go to secondary school, college, get a degree from university, get a job, get a promotion, get another promotion, and another, and another, retire, die. This sounds a lot like living for a ‘destination’ rather than a journey. More recently, however, we have evolved to understand that this is ludicrous. It makes no sense to live a life we don’t wish to live just for the hope that at some point when we’re old and rapidly degenerating we will be able to retire and reminisce on the wonderful life we have lived… (not). Life is about the journey. It must be fulfilling and enjoyable throughout, rather than preparing for an (anti-)climactic end. This improved model is generally a step in the right direction.

But there is a problem. What about goals and milestones? This model of a continuous journey removes the final milestone from the equation. Must we no longer celebrate the success of our lives? And without anything to aim for, how do you measure your progress and achievement? It’s like shooting a bow and arrow into a vacuum of space, a never-ending flight, rather than towards the centre of a bullseye target. What’s the point?

Let’s take the ‘micro-journey’ of developing your writing skills through blogging, for example. Ultimately, in order to succeed, you need to enjoy the very action of writing (the journey). However, it’s going to be near impossible to maintain in the long term unless you are somehow measuring your progress. Daniel Pink explains there are 3 ingredients to motivation. In order for you to be truly motivated, you must have autonomy, purpose and mastery. Provided you’ve ticked the boxes of autonomy (you are choosing when you write, how you write, what you write about etc.) and purpose (you have a good reason why you write), you need to tackle mastery.

Humans, by their very nature, crave feedback. It is impossible to know that you are mastering something without feedback. Feedback could be anything; complimentary comments from your readers or just the monthly number of readers your articles get. The latter, is a measureable quantity. Measurable quantities make for perfect goals. It’s hard to measure the success of a qualitative goal like “get a positive response from readers”, but it’s much easier to measure how many people read your article or how many people engaged on social media. If we don’t set milestones and goals, it’s really hard to measure our progress towards mastery.

And let’s be honest, can you imagine writing a blog article every week and not caring when you reached a million monthly readers? No, that feedback matters, and it’s worth celebrating.

Clearly, a balance between these two contrasting mantras is needed. Whilst the journey is where you spend most of your time, setting, hitting and celebrating goals gives you the feedback that pushes you to the next level. Whether it’s writing a blog, running a business or playing golf; immersing yourself in the journey of the activity and celebrating milestones are both equally crucial elements for progress.

In life, you’re repeatedly shooting your bow and arrow. So keep hitting the bullseye, and celebrating every time you do. But remember to enjoy the shooting along the way.

Food for thought for ‘big organisation’ interviewers/recruiters

Competency questions are ineffective during job interviews. This results in a) bad use of your time when trying to assess candidates and b) stopping you from selecting the best candidates.

By asking competency questions at interview, you are assessing the following:

1. How well can the candidate predict the competency questions I’m going to ask?
2. How well has he or she memorised their answers/examples?
3. How much time has the candidate put into preparing for the interview?

I believe that none of these are relevant assessments of how effective a candidate will be in an actual role.

Don’t get me wrong, competency questions are a great way to learn about the relevant skills, experiences and behaviours a candidate possesses. That’s why you should ask them on an application form. But keep them there. Don’t carry them over into in-person interviews.

Instead, I propose that you ask more of your competency questions on the written application form to learn about your candidates en-masse. Then, you do not need to interview as many, as you can eliminate more in advance. This in turn allows you to interview successful candidates for longer and get to know them as individuals. If you can get to know a candidate’s individual motivations and values, you are far more likely to select more effectively.