Ninety percent of people feel anxious when they hear the word “purpose.” That’s what the research told Tom Rath, and he thinks it’s a sign we’ve been thinking about it all wrong.
Tom Rath, researcher and bestselling author behind StrengthsFinder 2.0 and How Full Is Your Bucket?, has spent the better part of his career studying what makes people and workplaces thrive. His new book, What’s the Point? Turning Purpose Into Your Daily Superpower, challenges some of our most deeply held assumptions about meaning, contribution, and how we spend our time.
The Word That’s Working Against Us
“Purpose isn’t something that should give anyone anxiety because it’s really more about what we do every hour throughout the day than some grand thing that descends from the heavens on a sunny day that we have to go find over a decade.”
So Rath reframed it. Instead of chasing big-P Purpose, he invites us to ask a simpler question throughout the day: What’s the point? What’s the point of this meeting? This conversation? This hour? It sounds almost too simple. But that doesn’t make it obvious, especially when it is so easy to lead a distracted life.
Purpose isn’t some mountain to climb or treasure to find.
— Tom Rath, What’s the Point?
It’s fuel for today, right now, at this moment.
It’s Already Happening Around Us
Little-p purpose, as Rath describes it, doesn’t require a career overhaul or a spiritual revelation. It happens in the ordinary moments we often overlook.
A nurse who sits with a frightened patient. A retail worker who patiently solves someone’s problem. A teacher who notices when something clicks for a student. These aren’t footnotes to our real work. They often are the work that matters most.
“Purpose is really built into those interactions throughout the day, but we don’t do a great job of acknowledging that for ourselves. And most of us don’t put enough effort into helping other people to see and realize that throughout the day as well.”
One of the most valuable things we can do for the people around us is to name what they’re contributing. To call it out.
“The most valuable strength and thing that you can do for any other human being, a loved one, someone you manage or care for, is to spot what they’re doing that makes a difference and to call it out and to tell them that in great detail. Remind them of that on a day-to-day basis.”
Time Is the Real Wealth
Rath has been thinking about time differently than most of us for a long time. Diagnosed at 16 with a rare genetic syndrome that causes tumors to grow throughout the body, he has navigated a unique relationship with time since early adulthood. This has shaped everything.
Tom structures his days with intention:
- sleep is non-negotiable
- creative work happens in the morning when his mind is sharpest
- evenings are protected for family. (Not as a productivity hack, but as a values-based practice.)
“If you said to me what’s important for your wealth, I would put time ahead of money. In a hot minute.”
He also talks about what he calls time compression: those hours or weeks that feel more significant than entire years. A family trip where everyone is genuinely present. A creative stretch where more gets done in five days than in five months. We’ve all experienced this. The question is whether we’re building more of it on purpose.
Time’s value is determined not by quantity but by the intensity of intention we bring to it.
— Tom Rath, What’s the Point?
Initiating Instead of Just Responding
One of Rath’s more empowering observations is about what he calls the shift from consuming to creating, or more precisely, from responding to initiating.
“For every hour that I can spend creating and building things now… it essentially gives me a bigger headstart on a lot of other people out there because so many people are just sitting back and kind of letting life happen to them.”
He’s quick to scale this down to something accessible. Initiating doesn’t mean launching something. It can be as simple as a conversation.
“You don’t have to go write a book or an article. You can just go have a really good conversation with someone you care about for a half hour.”
A Question Worth Sitting With
What if we started each day by asking not what we need to get done, but who benefits from what we do?
It doesn’t require a grand answer. Just a small, honest moment of attention, repeated daily. Because, according to Rath, that’s how purpose actually gets built. It’s not found, it’s built.
In Bold Gratitude,
Lainie
Connect with and learn from Tom Rath:
- Explore his books, tools, and work at TomRath.org
- Follow Tom on X
