One powerful method forgetting at purpose is the five…

One powerful method forgetting at purpose is the five wise. Start with a descriptive statement. We make X products or we deliver our services and then ask why is that important? Five times after a few wise, you’ll find that you’re getting down to the fundamental purpose of the organization.

— from The Flight Plan (Purpose/Wisdom/Risk)

In the book

One useful map sets your purpose at the meeting point of four things — what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. Another is simply to ask "why" of your work five times in a row until you hit the real reason underneath it. Then dare to write it down. […] Then the steps. Draft a one-line destination. Put it where the four circles meet — what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, what you can be paid for — and pressure-test it by asking "why" until you reach bedrock. Watch where your free attention already goes for the clue. — The Flight Plan (Purpose/Wisdom/Risk)

And get comfortable being unsure, holding the question open rather than grabbing the first answer. When you need the real reason buried under a problem, ask why five times in a row until you strike bedrock; and protect the slow system from the fast one the way Kahneman did, refusing on principle to say yes to a request on the phone, because the quick answer is so rarely the wise one. Manage the inner voice. When a thought is strangling you, learn to step back and see it as just a thought — a passing appearance of words, not a fact; practice changing your inner dialogue, or stopping it altogether for stretches of the day. — The Mind in the Cockpit

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