There are times when we are not exactly lacking energy.
Sometimes the opposite is true.
There is something in us that wants to move.
We think too much. We pick up our phone without really knowing what we are looking for. We open the fridge without necessarily being hungry. We think about buying something, going out, starting a project, changing jobs, travelling, learning something new.
It feels as though we need to do something.
Anything.
Because simply staying where we are feels uncomfortable.
At other times, almost the opposite happens.
We sleep more. We go out less. We postpone things that used to feel simple. We have less desire to meet people, less curiosity, less movement.
Little by little, the world seems to become smaller.
These two states look completely different.
One is full of movement.
The other seems empty.
But I started wondering whether, in some cases, they might be part of the same dynamic.
Not necessarily a lack of energy.
Perhaps a difficulty in giving it direction.
What do we mean by energy?
Before going any further, there is one word here that needs to be handled carefully.
Energy.
I like the word because it describes an experience we recognise intuitively.
“I have no energy today.”
“I am full of energy.”
“There is so much inside me and I do not know where to put it.”
“It feels like something needs to come out.”
We roughly understand what these sentences mean.
But that does not mean we are talking about exactly the same thing at every layer of human experience.
If I look through the door of subjective experience, energy might mean a sense of vitality, tension, restlessness, or potential.
If I look psychologically, I might speak about desire, impulse, motivation, investment, or the need for action.
At the behavioural level, that energy may appear as movement, exploration, seeking, creation, consumption, approach, or work.
At the physiological level, the language changes again. I might observe states of activation, muscular tension, sleep, preparation for action, effort, and recovery.
And if I open a spiritual door, I might use energy to speak about a potential of the soul, a will to express, or something seeking manifestation through physical experience.
I do not need to turn all of these descriptions into a single explanation.
This is an important principle for me:
When we change the layer through which we observe a phenomenon, we also need to change the language.
We can recognise similar forms across different layers without assuming that the mechanisms are the same.
The phenomenon remains at the centre.
We change the door through which we look.
Perhaps purpose is a vector
When someone asks:
“What is my purpose in life?”
it is common to imagine that there is a hidden answer somewhere, waiting to be discovered.
As if there were one right profession.
One mission.
One specific place where we will finally think:
“This is it. I have discovered what I am here to do.”
But I am not sure purpose is an object.
It may be more useful to think of it as a vector.
Something that offers direction.
In that sense, purpose does not have to be what creates our energy.
It may be what helps organise what we are capable of mobilising.
That distinction matters to me.
Programming can be a medium.
Clinical work can be a medium.
Photography can be a medium.
Make-up can be a medium.
Music, writing, a company, raising children, caring for someone, teaching something — all of these can be mediums.
Perhaps there is an earlier question:
Through what can I find expression in the world?
And if I am looking through a spiritual lens:
How does what I am find expression in matter?
In that case, profession and purpose stop being synonyms.
A person may change professions several times and continue expressing something very similar through all of them.
Another person may spend decades doing exactly the same job without ever feeling that it truly expresses something of who they are.
When there is mobilisation but no “where to”
Imagine a system with the capacity to act.
There is desire.
There is impulse.
There is thought.
There is attention available.
There is some capacity to enter into contact with the world.
But there is no sufficiently meaningful direction organising all of it.
The movement does not necessarily disappear.
It can become diffuse.
And this is where something begins to interest me.
The person feels that they need to do something, but they do not know exactly what.
So they look for objects.
Food.
Shopping.
Social media.
Work.
Sex.
Travel.
Exercise.
Projects.
People.
A new idea.
There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these things.
The more interesting question is:
What function are they serving in that moment?
Because any one of them can temporarily provide a very simple structure:
something to want → something to do → an experience → some reward → some closure.
For a while, that mobilisation has found somewhere to go.
The problem appears when the object ends and the same restlessness is still there.
The food is gone.
The purchase arrives.
The trip ends.
The project loses its novelty.
The phone is put down.
And then we need to find the next thing.
At that point, I begin to wonder whether some compulsive behaviours can also be understood as repeated attempts to give a quick destination to a mobilisation that has not found a more stable direction.
This does not explain every compulsion.
Nor does it mean that everyone without a clear sense of purpose will become compulsive.
But it is an interesting door through which to look.
Sometimes the desire comes after the first step
There is another common trap when we are stuck.
We wait for something to happen inside us before we begin to move.
We wait until we feel like it.
We wait for motivation to arrive.
We wait until we find our purpose.
We wait to wake up one morning and simply want to do the thing we know might help us.
But the system does not always work in that order.
Sometimes what we are waiting for only appears after we begin to act.
A ten-minute walk.
Opening the document.
Having a shower and leaving the house.
Replying to a message.
Clearing the desk.
Doing the first exercise.
Not because these small actions have any magical power.
But because action creates experience.
Experience creates information.
The body registers that something has changed.
The environment responds.
Something happens.
And that creates feedback for the system.
The process may look more like this:
small movement → different experience → feedback → change of state → greater possibility of further movement.
In other words, we do not always need to wait for motivation before acting.
Sometimes we need to act just enough to create the conditions in which motivation can appear.
This becomes particularly important when the system has entered a region of withdrawal.
If each day contains less movement, less novelty, and fewer experiences capable of creating feedback, the system receives fewer and fewer signals that there is something happening for which mobilisation is worthwhile.
So waiting passively for the desire to return can sometimes reinforce the very state we are trying to leave.
The first movement does not need to be large.
In fact, it is often better if it is not.
If the system is running in low gear and we immediately try to create a revolution, we may create too much pressure, fail to sustain it, and turn the attempt into one more experience of failure.
The point is to create enough movement to change something in the experience.
Then observe what happens.
Perhaps the next step comes from there.
And there is another important distinction:
this does not simply mean “force yourself to do it”.
The movement needs to be proportionate to the state the system is in.
For someone who is deeply withdrawn, it might mean getting up, having a shower, and walking for fifteen minutes.
For someone who is hyperactivated, the movement needed may be almost the opposite:
stop.
Disconnect.
Reduce stimulation.
Sleep.
Recover.
The goal is not productivity.
It is to create an experience different from the one currently maintaining the state.
Thinking can also be a form of movement
This mobilisation does not even need to reach the external world.
We can spend hours moving inside our own minds.
Planning.
Anticipating.
Replaying conversations.
Creating scenarios.
Solving problems that do not yet exist.
Imagining possibilities.
Returning to the first possibility.
Thinking again.
There is activity.
Sometimes a great deal of it.
But very little resolution.
I have started to like an expression for this:
mobilisation without resolution.
Something has been activated, but it has not found enough closure for the system to reduce that mobilisation.
It is therefore possible to be physically still while remaining in continuous internal movement.
And perhaps that is why someone can reach the end of the day exhausted while feeling that they “did nothing”.
The system did.
It is just that much of that movement never found an organised way out.
Movement can also inflate
But there is another extreme.
Finding direction does not automatically mean finding balance.
I noticed this very clearly in my own projects.
When I began developing what eventually became WorkPilot, there was enthusiasm.
I had an idea.
I wanted to build something.
I wanted to see it working.
Then I started another system to help me with delivery work.
Again, there was curiosity, purpose, and movement.
The problem was not the projects.
It was the urgency.
I wanted them to work quickly.
And something interesting happens once we start moving.
Movement produces new information.
New information reveals new problems.
Solving problems creates new possibilities.
Possibilities produce new ideas.
New ideas create more things to do.
And the system can begin to inflate.
I am not simply talking about working too much.
I am talking about a dynamic that begins to feed itself:
movement → stimulation → new possibilities → more activation → more movement.
The more we do, the more things we find to do.
The more we think, the more things appear to think about.
The more we try to solve everything, the more sensitive the system becomes to whatever has not yet been solved.
Without enough space for recovery, movement stops being only expression.
It becomes a machine that produces its own need to keep moving.
Until what initially gave us life begins to consume it.
The system can also shrink
At the other extreme there is an almost opposite dynamic.
And here I would make an important distinction.
Stillness is not the problem.
Rest is not withdrawal.
Not being productive does not mean being unwell.
Rest is part of any system that mobilises.
I am talking about something else.
I am talking about the field of life gradually becoming smaller.
The person goes out less.
Sees fewer people.
Starts fewer things.
Experiences less.
Receives less novelty.
Has fewer experiences capable of generating interest, learning, competence, or feedback.
And that begins to create its own conditions.
less movement → less contact → less stimulation → less mobilisation → even less movement.
What once seemed simple begins to feel large.
Going somewhere feels demanding.
Starting something takes more effort.
Replying to someone can wait.
The functional world starts to shrink around the person.
This is what I meant when I began thinking about a kind of low gear.
Not because the organism consciously decides:
“I am going to save energy.”
But because a configuration of low mobilisation can, over time, become increasingly familiar, accessible, and stable.
The system also learns from what it stops doing.
Expansion and withdrawal
I first formulated this idea in a very simple way:
stillness + stillness + stillness → stagnation
movement + movement + movement → exhaustion.
Today I would make a small correction.
It is not exactly stillness.
It is withdrawal.
And it is not simply movement.
It is expansion without enough regulation.
So I would put it this way:
Movement can create conditions for more movement.
Withdrawal can create conditions for more withdrawal.
At one extreme, the system keeps inflating.
At the other, it keeps shrinking.
Neither trajectory needs to happen consciously.
They can be built gradually through the feedback produced by the way we are living.
This also means that balance is not a fixed point somewhere in the middle.
Perhaps balance is the capacity to move between states.
Mobilise.
Act.
Stop.
Recover.
Integrate.
Mobilise again.
Life is not immobility.
But neither is it continuous movement.
It is rhythm.
Where does purpose come in?
This is where purpose begins to take on another function.
It offers a:
where to.
A direction capable of organising present choices in relation to something we consider meaningful.
And then other processes come into play.
Purpose asks:
Where am I going?
Self-governance asks:
Is this still the direction I want to sustain?
Self-management asks:
At what pace, and under what conditions, can I keep moving in that direction?
And experience responds.
The world returns consequences.
We feel.
We observe.
We learn.
We recalibrate.
So the path begins to look more like:
direction → action → experience → consequence → feedback → recalibration → new action.
This changes something important.
Purpose does not need to be fully formed before we begin.
Perhaps purpose is also built while we live
There is a very seductive fantasy:
first I will discover who I really am and what my purpose is; then I will start living accordingly.
But perhaps the process is almost the other way round.
We notice some direction.
We experiment.
We do something.
We observe what it produces.
We discover something about ourselves.
We recalibrate.
We try again.
And what initially felt like little more than an inclination begins to take shape.
In that sense, purpose is not only something we find.
It is also something we recognise progressively through experience.
And this helps explain why it is so difficult to simply tell another person what their purpose is.
I may look at someone and notice patterns.
I may notice where there is vitality.
I may notice where they seem to disappear.
I may have a very good hypothesis about what appears to be trying to find expression in them.
But if I simply hand them the conclusion, it is still my reading of the person.
Not their experience.
Some processes cannot be taught from the outside.
They can only be accompanied while they unfold.
What if purpose is a need of the soul?
Here I am deliberately walking through another door.
I am no longer making a psychological or physiological claim.
I am entering a spiritual interpretation.
If we allow, as a metaphysical hypothesis, that there is something in the person that cannot be reduced to the body — what we might call soul or spirit — then purpose can take on another meaning.
Perhaps the question:
“What is my purpose?”
can also mean:
“How does what I am find expression in this world?”
In that frame, physical life becomes the field in which something that is not purely physical takes form through:
choices.
Relationships.
Creation.
Service.
Work.
Experience.
I am not presenting this as a scientific conclusion.
It is an ontological interpretation.
But in another language, it speaks to a similar form that we can observe across the other layers:
potential → direction → expression → experience → return.
The grammar looks similar.
The mechanism may be entirely different.
Perhaps the question is smaller than we imagine
“What is my purpose in life?”
Perhaps that is too large a question to answer all at once.
We can begin with closer questions.
What in me is asking to be expressed?
Where am I directing what I am able to mobilise?
Do the things that occupy my time also build some kind of direction?
Am I living, or am I continually looking for something that keeps me occupied?
When I do something, does it merely reduce my restlessness for a moment, or do I feel that some part of me has found expression there?
Perhaps purpose is not an epic mission hidden somewhere in the future.
It may be an initially imperfect direction that becomes clearer as we interact with the world.
And perhaps that is why it matters so much.
Because there seems to be something deeply human in the need not only to move, but to feel that our movement is going somewhere.
When there is mobilisation but no destination, we can begin to go round in circles.
When we progressively stop moving, we can begin to shrink.
When we keep moving without allowing recovery, we can inflate until we can no longer sustain what we have built.
Perhaps the challenge is not simply to find energy.
Nor simply to find purpose.
Perhaps it is to learn how to relate:
energy, direction, expression, and rhythm.
To find something worthy of our movement.
To give it form in the world.
And to allow enough space, after moving, to stop as well.
Because purpose can give direction to the path.
But we still have to learn how to walk it.