Free tools · Develop yourself · 30 minutes

What Do You Actually Want?

Not what sounds successful. Not what everyone else expects. What do you actually want?

Free, no account, nothing to sign up to. You will leave with something written down.

01 · Mark's view

Why this matters, and why most people get it wrong.

I'm not sure we ask ourselves this question enough

I've spent a lot of my life chasing things.

Building businesses. Growing companies. Opening markets. Making money. Trying to make things bigger. Trying to make things better. Trying to get to the next thing.

And there's nothing necessarily wrong with any of that.

I like ambition. I like people who want to do something with their lives.

But the older I've got, the more interested I've become in a slightly different question.

Why?

Why do you want the thing you're working so hard to get?

I've met plenty of people who can tell me exactly what they're trying to achieve. They want to build a £100 million company. Become CEO. Sell their business. Make a million pounds. Buy the house. Move to Dubai. Retire at 50. Get married. Have children. Become famous. Whatever it is.

But keep asking why and sometimes something interesting happens.

They don't really know.

Maybe it isn't actually your goal

Maybe your parents thought being a doctor was success.

Maybe everyone around you is building businesses.

Maybe your friends started making more money than you.

Maybe somebody you follow on Instagram has the house.

Maybe your industry decided that becoming CEO was the top of the mountain.

Maybe you set the goal when you were 25 and you're now 45.

And you've never really stopped to ask whether the person you are today still wants what the person you were then decided to chase.

That's quite a thought.

You can spend twenty years successfully climbing a mountain only to discover you don't particularly want to be standing on top of it.

I want to know what is underneath the answer

If you tell me: “I want £10 million.”

Fine. But why?

Freedom. Okay. What does freedom mean?

Control over my time. Fine. What would you do with the time?

Spend more time with my children. Travel. Choose the projects I work on. Not answer to anybody.

Now we're getting somewhere.

Because perhaps you don't actually want £10 million.

Perhaps you want Tuesday afternoon.

And maybe Tuesday afternoon doesn't cost £10 million.

Take the audience away

Here's something else I've started thinking about.

Imagine you get exactly what you say you want. But nobody knows.

You can't post it. Nobody congratulates you. Nobody is impressed. Your friends aren't jealous. Your parents don't finally tell you they're proud of you. Nobody on LinkedIn knows you've done it.

Would you still want it?

Hopefully the answer is yes.

But perhaps it isn't. That's interesting too.

Because we're all influenced by other people. Of course we are.

The problem starts when we spend our lives trying to win a competition we didn't consciously enter.

Your calendar might know more than you do

Ask somebody what matters most and you'll often hear: family, health, friends, freedom, doing something meaningful.

Fine. Now show me your calendar.

That's where things get uncomfortable.

If your family is the most important thing in your life but they get whatever time is left after work, that's worth noticing.

If your health matters but you never find three hours in a week to look after it, that's worth noticing.

If you say you desperately want to start a business but you've spent twelve months talking about it and no Saturday morning doing anything about it, that's worth noticing too.

I'm not saying your calendar is always right. People have responsibilities. Bills need paying. Children need looking after. Life isn't a blank sheet of paper.

But there can be a big difference between what we say matters and what our behaviour says matters.

I want this exercise to look at both.

You cannot have everything

This may be the bit nobody particularly wants to hear.

You can't have everything. At least not all at once.

You may want to build an enormous company. You may also want complete freedom.

You may want to travel constantly. You may also want deep roots.

You may want extraordinary financial success. You may also want to be home every evening.

Perhaps you can find clever ways to combine some of these. But eventually life contains trade-offs.

Every serious yes is also a no to something else.

So I'm less interested in a list of everything you want.

I'm interested in: what matters enough to choose? And: what aren't you prepared to sacrifice to get it?

Most of life is Tuesday

We spend a lot of time imagining the big moments. The exit. The wedding. The promotion. The new house. The holiday. The award. The day you finally make it.

But those aren't most of your life.

Most of your life is a Tuesday.

You wake up. You have breakfast. You go somewhere. You spend time with certain people. You do some work. You come home. You eat. You think. You sleep. Then you do it again.

So I don't just want to know what your dream life looks like.

I want to know what an ordinary Tuesday looks like in a life you'd actually enjoy living.

That might tell us considerably more.

And perhaps you already know

There's one other possibility.

Maybe you're not confused. Maybe you know exactly what you want. You just don't particularly like what admitting it would mean.

Maybe you'd have to leave something. Start something. Stop something. Earn less. Disappoint somebody. Move. Stay. Say no. Accept that something you've spent years pursuing isn't important anymore.

Sometimes “I don't know what I want” is true.

Sometimes it's safer than saying: “I think I know what I want, but I'm frightened of what it might cost.”

We should find out which one it is.

What we're looking for

We're not trying to design a perfect life. I don't believe one exists.

We're trying to get closer to understanding: what you genuinely want, what you think you're supposed to want, what you've probably outgrown, what enough might look like, who you want around you, what role work should actually play, what money is actually for, what you're willing to sacrifice, what you're absolutely not willing to sacrifice, and what you may already know but be avoiding.

And then we'll look at several different futures rather than pretending there is only one right answer.

02 · Think about this

Sit with these before you start.

Why do you want the thing you are working so hard to get?
If nobody could ever know you had achieved it, would you still want it?
Which of your ambitions did somebody else teach you to want?
What does your calendar say matters, as opposed to what you say matters?
What would an ordinary Tuesday look like in a life you would actually enjoy living?
Is there something you already know you want but are frightened of what it might cost?

03 · What I would do

The method, if we were doing this across a table.

01
Start with the answer you already have, then go underneath it. The first answer is usually the socially acceptable one.
02
Trace where each ambition came from. Influenced doesn't mean false, but unexamined is dangerous.
03
Remove the audience. Anything that survives being invisible is more likely to be yours.
04
Put your stated priorities next to your actual week and your actual spending, without moralising about the gap.
05
Run the £10 million test, then work out which of those changes actually requires the money.
06
Define enough before you define more. Otherwise more is the only answer available.
07
Force the trade-offs. What you refuse to sacrifice tells you more than what you say you want.
08
Build three genuinely different lives, remove your favourite, and see what the alternative reveals.
09
Finish with reversible experiments, not resignations.

04 · Do it yourself

What you will have at the end.

—An honest separation of what appears to be yours from what may have been inherited.
—The things underneath your ambitions — what the money, title or freedom is really for.
—A definition of enough, in income, achievement, recognition and work.
—A concrete description of an ordinary Tuesday five years from now, and what would have to be true for it.
—Your genuine non-negotiables and the trade-offs you are consciously willing to make.
—Three genuinely different futures, plus the serious alternative when your preferred one is removed.
—The list of changes that do not actually require £10 million.
—Five small, reversible experiments to run over the next 90 days.

05 · Use your AI

The prompt. This is the part most people never write.

TAIU exercise

TAIU what do you actually want exercise

A guided AI interview that goes underneath your ambitions, finds the contradictions between what you say and how you live, and leaves you with experiments rather than a life plan.

Approximately 20-30 minutes

What will it ask me?

What you say you wantThe ambitions you arrive with, before anything is examined.
Why you want itWhat the money, the title or the freedom is actually meant to give you.
Where it came fromParents, industry, friends, comparison, social media, an earlier you.
Without an audienceWhether you'd still want it if nobody could ever know.
What you've outgrownGoals you're pursuing out of investment rather than desire.
Where your time goesA normal week, compared honestly with what you say matters.
The £10 million testWhat would change, and which of those changes actually needs the money.
EnoughThe point at which more stops materially improving the life you want.
What you're waiting forGenuine dependencies versus permission you've postponed.
The priceWhat you will and absolutely will not sacrifice.
Your ordinary TuesdayA concrete day five years out, and what would have to be true for it.
Three different livesGenuinely different futures, then the one you prefer removed.

View full prompt

I want you to help me work out what I actually want from my life.

Do not treat this as a conventional goal-setting exercise.

Do not create a vision board.

Do not start by asking me to write five-year goals.

Do not assume that the ambitions I arrive with are genuinely mine.

I want you to interview me.

Ask one question at a time and wait for my answer before moving on.

Be curious.

Be direct.

If my answer sounds rehearsed, generic or socially desirable, go underneath it.

Keep asking why when it is useful.

But don't turn every answer into an interrogation.

Look for contradictions between:

what I say I want
what I actually do
where I spend my time
where I spend my money
what I repeatedly postpone
what appears to make me happy
what I seem to seek approval for
what I'm willing to sacrifice
and what I'm unwilling to sacrifice

Do not diagnose me.

Do not pretend to be a therapist.

Do not attribute my choices to childhood trauma or psychological conditions.

If emotional patterns appear relevant, ask me about them rather than explaining them to me.

Do not flatter me.

Do not assume more money, status, achievement or freedom is automatically better.

Equally, do not romanticise having less.

I may genuinely be extremely ambitious.

That is fine.

The objective is not to reduce my ambition.