One of the most powerful exercises I’ve done in recent years is to articulate my philosophies of life and work.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a philosophy as:
“A theory or attitude that acts as a guiding principle for behaviour”.
In essence, a philosophy is the unconscious operating system guiding your behaviour in daily life—the principles you’re using to navigate the world.
So if you articulate yours, you’re essentially making the unconscious conscious and translating the language of your heart into words on a page—almost like holding a mirror up to your “gut instinct” and seeing what’s there.
From here, you can see it more objectively, and tweak it if you need to.
Not only does this lead to better self understanding, it’s also an immense source of clarity for when the time comes to make an important decision.
If you’d like to get clearer on your own philosophy, this short exercise from my upcoming book walks you through the process and questions I use.
I first tried this after reading “Designing Your Life” by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, and have done it at least once a year since — usually when I am walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain. What follows are the questions I use. Please keep in mind that you don’t need to answer them all — choose the ones that resonate most with you.
Then, ask your inner critic to take a nap, because you’re going to be writing free flow for a while. The aim is get your stream of consciousness flowing and down onto the page. No filtering. No judgement. No editing. There will be time for that later.
Note: the only wrong answer here is a dishonest one. Don’t write what you think you should write. Write what you really believe. Your philosophy is for your eyes only.
Life philosophy
1.) What is the purpose of life, generally?
In other words, why do you think we all find ourselves on this floating rock, orbiting around a gigantic fireball in the middle of deep dark space? With the ability to think thoughts, have conversations, experience joy, suffering, and everything in between? What’s it all for? Is it random and meaningless? Or is there a deeper mystery to all of this? Why do we exist?
2.) What is the purpose of your life, specifically?
Here you explore the question of your specific role within the bigger drama unfolding around you. Where do you fit into all of this? Did you come here with a mission? Something to contribute or share with the world? Why do you bother getting out of bed in the morning? Why do you do something rather than nothing?
3.) What’s your definition of success in life? What does it mean to have lived a good life? What are the essential ingredients?
4.) Imagine you are on your death bed decades in the future and your grandchild comes to you and asks: “if I want to have a good life, what are the most important things to aim for?” What would you tell him or her?
5.) If someone who knew you really well was giving a speech about you at your funeral, what would you ideally want them to say?
6.) If you could only accomplish 5 things before you die, what would they be?
7.) Think of a role model — someone you look up to and admire. Why do you respect them so much?
Answering even just a few of these will give you ample material for your life philosophy. We’ll weave your answers together into something more coherent at a later stage. Now, let’s look at some questions for clarifying your work philosophy.
Work philosophy
1.) What is the purpose of work, generally?
What’s the point of it?
Is it to use our gifts in service of others? To make the world a better place than we found it? As a vehicle for higher levels of growth, self actualisation, and contribution? Or is it a means to an end? A way to support your family and/or fuel your hobbies and life outside of it?
2.) What is the purpose of your working life, specifically?
Is your work helping you to grow and become a better version of yourself? What is the difference you want your work to make in the lives of others? Where does your work fit into the bigger context and ecosystem you belong to? What role do you want it to play in your family, community, society, and culture?
3.) What’s your criteria for success in your working life? By what metrics will you know if you are succeeding—or not—in your work?
Is it the depth or scale of impact you’re having? Is it about continuously learning and developing new skills, so you can contribute more? Is it about being able to provide for your family? Is it about enjoying the process? Is it about working towards a worthwhile goal or mission that you really believe in?
4.) What role does money play?
Is it the primary driver? Or is it a tool or resource to support a bigger mission?
5.) At your funeral, imagine a colleague, employee, or partner is giving a speech about what you were like to work with. What would you want them to say about you?
6.) If your grandkids came to you for advice on what to pursue in their working life, what would you tell them?
7.) Do you believe in a higher power? If so, what implications does that have on what you choose to do for work?
Creating Work-Life Coherence
From years at the Stanford Life Design Lab, Burnett and Evans have noticed that the final part of this exercise usually leads to the biggest breakthroughs. Here, the aim is to create greater coherence between your life and work philosophies, which you do by asking:
1.) Are your views on life and work aligned? If so, where?
2.) Where do your work and life philosophy clash?
3.) Does one drive the other? And if so, is that you really want?
When I did this, I discovered a conflict. My life philosophy emphasized the importance of embracing the full spectrum of the human experience and living a well rounded life which included building a family, spirituality, friendship, community, play, culture, and adventures.
However, my workview — which had been heavily influenced by the entrepreneurs I followed in my early twenties, assumed that the primary source of meaning in my life would be my work.
I was living to work, rather than working to live. And this meant I wasn’t making enough time for other important sources of meaning in my life. Based on this insight, I edited my work philosophy so that there was greater coherence between it and my lifeview.
Using Progressive Summarisation to Put it All Together
You now have the “raw material” for crafting your life and work philosophies. Now, it’s only a matter of weaving together the best bits from your answers into a coherent whole for each philosophy. There are numerous ways to approach this. Personally, I use Tiago Forte‘s “Progressive Summarisation” method.
Here’s how it works:
1.) Pass #1: Read through your answers to the life philosophy questions.
2.) Pass #2: Bold the sentences that most resonate or that have the biggest emotional impact on you.
3.) Pass #3: Go through each of the bolded sentences a second time and use a yellow highlighter to highlight the particular elements of each sentence that most grab you.
The aim is to capture the highest impact material and extract the signal from the noise.
4.) Copy everything you’ve highlighted in yellow and paste it into a list of bullet points, with a separate point for each highlight.
5.) These bullet points will serve as an outline for your philosophy, so reorder them in a way that makes sense.
6.) Elaborate and expand on each sentence where needed.
7.) Repeat steps 1 – 6 for your work philosophy.
I encourage you to do this manually and not use AI, as this is about looking deep within and figuring out what’s most important to you.
The goal isn’t to have a piece of paper with your philosophy on it at the end. It’s about changing your inner operating system.
And you can only do that by going deep.
