I don’t believe we’re each born with a purpose. We have more freedom than that, the freedom to choose the impact we’ll make.
Our work, though, does have a purpose. The change we seek to make. The people we’re here to make it for.
When we commit to work with purpose, it transforms us as well as the people we’re engaging with.
Who’s it for, what’s it for… if we can continue to return to the purpose of this product, this meeting, this ad–then we can find a common language and coordinate our efforts to make a difference.
Resistance pushes us in many ways. It pushes us to imagine that our work isn’t for us, we’re just biding time until we get to the real stuff. It pushes us to deny responsibility or to blame the system. And mostly, it pushes us to refuse to name the purpose of how we’re spending our time.
Stuck is just another word for being conflicted about our purpose. The knot holds us back because we’ve become entangled in goals that are mutually exclusive.
Our world is shaped by contagious and competitive games.
Along the way, we invent scoreboards that change the culture, and badges that we award to various players.
An example: How did we end up with weddings that cost $200,000?
It’s a great example of a runway cultural dynamic, a system within a system, a game that rewards the players who keep it going.
Weddings, like most things humans participate in, are about status and affiliation. A demonstration of the hierarchy, a chance to fit in and be part of something.
Being married is a badge, but the way we get married is processed on a scoreboard.
Weddings are group events, you can’t have one by yourself. As a result, the ornamentation and structure are broadcast, often to horizontal peer groups. Friends and relatives, some of whom are likely to get married soon. “People like us do things like this” is the definition of culture, and weddings have the ‘people like us’ part built in.
The industry benefits from a more expensive event. Since a florist or caterer can only do one wedding at a time, making each wedding more profitable (see below for more on profitable) is the best way for them to meet their goals. They have an incentive to turn the scoreboard and keep the game going.
Spending more turns the ratchet, and the ratchet almost always turns in one direction.
Of course, the most prevalent contagious and competitive game system is capitalism. A simple metric–profit–that’s universal, easy to measure and rewarded–creates an interoperable game that almost everyone is part of.
If you want to change people (your industry, your community, the world), the most direct method is to build a contagious and competitive game that works within the uber-capitalism game, until it gets enough momentum that it spirals in its own direction.
It’s not simply money. We can use any easily sought and compared metric. How you look at the gym, or your time running a mile are both metrics on the scoreboard.
A badge/label (like ‘organic’ or ‘B. Corp’) is a start, but without a chance to exceed, it can stall because it doesn’t encourage people to seek status by doing more of it (hence the endless litany of post-organic certifications that some food purveyors seek out). “How can I be more more compliant to the rules?” is not an endless game. “Compared to them” might be.
Badges are finite. Check the box, get the badge. As a result, they level off.
Scoreboards that spread have ‘more’ built in. Birders have lists of lifetime finds, DuoLingo users have streaks and the Olympics, in addition to medals, have world records. Youth sports go off the rails because we act as though there’s a trophy shortage, and the cost of college increases because of the feature race of more. The same is true for diagnostic medical equipment. Compared to what?
The dynamics involved don’t automatically make each of these games bad, though. The hard work is seeing the effective dynamics and then putting them to work to build a sticky, contagious game that moves us toward better.
I’ve built a simple website that facilitates the conversations that can help us get unstuck.
In The Knot, I describe how we get entangled, hoping for two things to co-exist that cannot. We hide behind the entanglements, refusing to see them, and so our problems can feel permanent.
Working with thousands of people over the last few months, I’ve found that a few simple questions can unlock a deep conversation about what’s holding us back. But these conversations are easier with someone else. In person is great, Zoom works too.
This week, I’ll be posting some of the KnotChats I’ve hosted.
If you’d like to be part of one, you can organize one in just a few minutes. I hope you’ll check out the free site I built. It’s at TheKnot.chat.
Optimized for the phone, the key is that you’ll want to do it with someone who needs you. It’s 1:1, private and powerful. Who can you help?
I’m posting a simple video with instructions below:
All this week, to celebrate the launch of The Knot, I’ll be posting conversations I’ve had about problem-solving.
Some are more focused on the structured approach built into the free tool I built (find it at theknot.chat ) while, others, like these two, are a bit looser.
The first one I recorded was with the legendary Simone Giertz. I was a bit nervous, but we had a lot of fun.
And a second, with my old friend, co-author and impresario Chip Conley. His Modern Elder Academy is changing lives.
But you can. Especially if your community is there to help. All help is self-help, multiplied by the expectations, support and compassion of the people around you.
Willpower and self-control are a mystery–we’re influenced far more by our situation, by the culture around us and by everything that’s come before. A mechanistic view of a physical entity shows that we’re turtles all the way down–atoms and electricity, each on a path. Golf balls don’t have self control, they simply follow a trajectory. And yet… each of us apparently has the ability to exercise agency and to work to solve the problems we confront. We talk to others and to ourselves, and shifting those conversations can shift the actions we take.
The best books in the genre help us get to where we hope to go. They turn on a light or help us understand a way of thinking that gets us unstuck.
Tomorrow, The Knot goes to people around the world. It’s aimed directly at the stuck we often find ourselves in. I’m confident that the book itself won’t do much of anything, but combined with conversations and the shifts we can each make, I’m hopeful it will help people get to where they need to go.
That’s a lot to ask from a short book, but it’s already had an impact on thousands of people. Thank you for showing up to make things better. Knowing that better is possible is a great first step.
The sensitivity analysis for a decision is easy to overlook, because we tend to focus on the expected outcome.
Perhaps it makes sense to begin with the edges instead.
Upside: If this works, really works, what are the implications?
Downside: If this fails, totally, what are the costs?
After we understand the edges, then it makes sense to be more nuanced about the chances of either happening and start discussing the likely outcome.
Want to try a brand new place for dinner? The worst that can happen is that you’ll waste a dinner. On the other hand, if it’s dinner with your new big account and the boss is coming, the worst that can happen is very different.
Should you buy a lottery ticket? Well, the big outcome is millions of dollars. The small outcome is a total waste. Now that we understand the extremes, perhaps it pays to realize that the odds of winning are essentially zero, so we ought to pass.
Don’t be dissuaded by the small or transfixed by the big. That’s only the first half of the calculation.
Of course, this is obvious. And yet we are rarely patient enough to do all the steps. (Driving to the airport is dramatically more dangerous than getting on a plane…)
September 20, 2026
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