Anchor your goals around what truly matters to you

You wake up one morning and realize your diary of accomplishments reads like a never-ending checklist: reports submitted, emails answered, meetings attended. Somewhere in there, your favorite painting class faded away; you can’t even remember your last canvas. That’s the cost of a map without meaning markers. It’s a map drawn by autopilot, everywhere but toward what you treasure.

At Harvard, I once asked freshmen to sketch their world—dining hall, dorm, lecture hall—but most left the library blank. To them, it was a square building but not a place of success. Their map ignored what really mattered. We all do this every day, letting our calendars—even our bosses—chart our courses. Yet we crave meaning: why we work, what fuels our energy. That’s why the first step in truly succeeding is to list your meaningful markers—those people and values you’d fight for.

When you pin these landmarks on your reality map, everything else rearranges itself. Suddenly the calendar makes room for what truly lights you up. And you start working not just because an email popped up but because you’re steering toward destinations that matter. Your compass has found its true north.

Take three minutes to write your ten brightest points of purpose—big and small, personal and professional. Circle them in your mind’s map and note the blank spaces you’ve been neglecting. Finally, carve out a single slot in your week for one undernourished landmark: a friend’s birthday call, a long walk, a reading hour. That simple act reorients your entire day toward what you care about most.