Feeling purposeless or dispassionate is an affliction that many of us face. The cultural narrative suggests that we must find our passion or purpose, as though it were a lost treasure waiting to be discovered.

I, too, subscribed to this belief and spent years on a quest to uncover “the thing” that would give my life direction and meaning. Through trial and error, I learned an essential truth: purpose and passion are not discovered; they are built.

The Search for Purpose: My Two Criteria

For a long time, I operated under the assumption that I would “know” I had found my purpose when it met two specific criteria:

1. Natural Talent: I had to be inherently good at it.
2. Perceived Reward: It had to feel worth investing my time and effort in.

I thought these two factors would align to reveal the work I was “meant” to do. However, reality proved more complicated. Everything I explored seemed to meet only one of these criteria, never both. Either I was good at something, but it felt meaningless, or I found something meaningful but struggled to excel at it.

The Case of My Degree

My journey through academia illustrates this struggle. I was drawn to engineering, fascinated by its capacity to solve complex problems and make a tangible impact. But there was a problem: I wasn’t naturally good at math. Frustrated by my lack of innate skill, I decided to pivot to biology, a subject in which I had historically excelled. For a year, I thrived academically in biology. It came easily to me, and my grades reflected that.

Yet, I couldn’t escape the hollow feeling that crept in during my biology courses. Despite my success, I felt disconnected from the material and uninspired by the prospects it offered. I was just checking boxes without any sense of fulfillment.

The Turning Point

After a year of cruising through biology, I reflected on what I wanted from my education and career. I realized that given the choice between an easy but hollow path and a challenging yet meaningful one, I would rather choose meaning every time. Engineering was difficult for me, but it represented a field where the rewards—the opportunity to solve problems and create impactful solutions—felt deeply worthwhile.

I switched back to engineering. This time, I approached it with a different mindset. I stopped expecting to excel immediately and instead focused on improving incrementally. I embraced the challenge, and over time, my skills grew. The more effort I invested, the more rewarding it became. Engineering became my purpose, not because I “found” it, but because I built it through dedication and perseverance.

Why We Build Purpose and Passion

This experience taught me a critical lesson: purpose and passion are not static qualities waiting to be uncovered. They are dynamic, emerging through the interplay of effort, growth, and meaning. Here are a few insights I’ve gained:

1. Purpose Requires Effort: Something doesn’t feel meaningful until we’ve invested in it. The work itself—the struggle, growth, and small victories—creates meaning over time. Do what is meaningful, not what is convenient.
2. Passion Follows Competence: We often think passion comes first, but it’s the reverse. As we get better at something, we’re more likely to enjoy it and feel passionate about it. The problem is that people look for something they are already good at, when in reality, if you get good at something you care about, you’ll enjoy it much more than if you were already good at it.
3. Challenge Drives Fulfillment: The easiest paths rarely lead to a sense of purpose. It’s the challenges we overcome that give us a sense of accomplishment and alignment with our goals.
4. Meaning is Subjective: What feels rewarding to one person might not to another. Pursuing what feels meaningful to you matters more than following external expectations. There is no easy path to this realisation, you need to do some serious soul-searching to find what is meaningful to you.

What You Should Do Instead

Instead of endlessly searching for a predefined dream or purpose, take these actionable steps to build your passion:

1. Pick Something Meaningful: Choose a goal or pursuit that resonates with you. It doesn’t have to be something you’re already good at, in fact it’s arguably better if you suck at it right now—it just has to matter to you. I’ve already written a step-by-step guide on how to do this in less than a day.
2. Commit to Relentless Improvement: Work on it with everything you have every single day for 5 to 10 years, depending on the scope of your goal. Even when progress feels slow, focus on the effort you put in each day rather than immediate results.
3. Success is About Inputs, Not Outcomes: Success is about effort, not just outcomes. The outcome is a lagging indicator, outside your control, while effort is a leading indicator, fully within your control. By focusing on your inputs, you all but guarantee future success.
4. Trust the Process: After spending 20 hours putting all of your effort into something, not only will you see amazing improvements, you’ll start feeling addicted to improving at it. Over time, this dedication compounds, and in five to ten years, your wildest success is practically guaranteed.

Final Thoughts

Success isn’t about reaching a final destination—it’s about consistently showing up and putting in the work. Passion isn’t found; it’s built through effort and persistence. Instead of focusing on distant outcomes, commit to daily, measurable effort. Pick a meaningful goal, work on it relentlessly, and track your progress based on input, not results. If you show up every day and push yourself to improve, if you leave nothing on the table, success will follow. Purpose and passion emerge from this journey, and the process of building them is the greatest reward.