The unfinished work of becoming myself

In October 2026, while trying to make sense of what I wanted from my life, I wrote down four desires. I wanted peaceful moments that felt authentically mine. I wanted to be present with the people I care about. I wanted to notice the blessings in my life. And I wanted to do something intentional for my body, my mind, and my soul.

They were modest sentences for someone who can generate a very ambitious plan.

That was what made them useful. They named experiences I wanted to have that day. They gave me something to notice in the evening. Had I actually been present? Had I made room for peace? Or had I spent another day doing things that sounded important while postponing the life they were supposed to serve?

This is where my work on character has been taking me. I still care about building things, solving difficult problems, and doing consequential work. I am also trying to become more deliberate about the person doing those things. Achievement can tell me that I accomplished a goal. It leaves open how I treated people, whether I chose the right goal, and what the pursuit required me to neglect.

I am writing from inside that work. Some things are clearer than they were. The distance between understanding and practice remains considerable.

When purpose was blurry¶

I could describe many kinds of work that interested me: invention, commercialization, strategy, investing, helping a promising idea find the people and resources it needed. My career had given me several ways to be useful. That also made the question of direction harder. A plausible next move was easy to explain. A coherent reason for choosing it over the alternatives was more elusive.

Words such as impact, opportunity, and growth captured something real. They were also broad enough to accommodate almost any attractive opportunity. I could fit another project inside them without resolving what deserved my attention.

The blurriness was partly a problem of scale. I was trying to answer a life question with a career decision. Which role should I pursue? Which problem should I work on? Those questions matter. But a role cannot fully specify how I want to be a friend, a colleague, or a person alone with his own thoughts.

I wanted purpose to help me choose. For that to happen, it had to become specific enough to place demands on me. A statement that approves every ambition offers very little guidance when two good things compete for the same afternoon.

What CCL gave me to work with¶

My work with the Center for Conscientious Leadership, or CCL, gave that inquiry a structure. Its emphasis on purpose, character, courage, and impact placed the development of the person alongside the development of the career. Its programs connect self-awareness, relationships, purpose, and daily conduct.¹

I find it helpful to put those ideas into questions. What am I trying to contribute? How do I want to behave while doing it? What will I do when the behavior I respect is uncomfortable? What difference does any of this make to another person?

CCL’s purpose work starts with a life story: the experiences and relationships that shaped someone, and the themes that become visible through reflection.² That is a useful discipline for me. It asks me to look for evidence in a life already lived before designing an impressive description of the next one.

The character exercises go further. The materials I have been working with include Building the Foundation, Drafting the Phrases of My Code of Daily Living, and Drafting the Principles. They move through a sequence: insight → desires → phrases → principles. The first task is to understand an experience. The next is to say what it makes me want to bring into daily life. Then I have to turn that desire into language that can guide a decision.

That last step is demanding. “Be more present” is easy to endorse. Giving someone my undivided attention means deciding what else will wait.

One of the best features of the Code of Daily Living is the requirement to prioritize. There can be a broader collection of principles, but only a few should receive particular attention in my current circumstances. CCL’s public description similarly emphasizes a small number of immediate growth areas and a community in which to discuss progress and difficulty.³ A list of fifteen admirable intentions can become another way to avoid choosing. A few concrete commitments are harder to hide behind.

From admirable words to an ordinary day¶

My October draft separates virtues I want to draw on—curiosity, courage, creativity, generosity, justice, and integrity—from qualities I especially want to strengthen: presence, patience, gratitude, humility, prudence, self-discipline, and self-compassion.⁴

I do not read the first list as a certificate that I already possess those qualities consistently. It names resources I hope to bring to the work. The second list directs my attention toward growth. The distinction is useful precisely because I can value something without yet being dependable at practicing it.

The four desires I wrote down became the first four principles in my code:

• Make room for peace. Give a peaceful moment my full attention, without requiring it to produce something.
• Be present with the people I care about. Make room for listening and undivided attention.
• Practice gratitude. Pause long enough to notice and appreciate something specific.
• Care intentionally for body, mind, and soul. Take a small action for each, within my actual capacity.

These are public paraphrases of my working code. Their simplicity is deliberate. I need principles I can use when I am busy or disappointed, when another task feels urgent, and when I am tempted to defer the important things until life becomes less complicated.

Other parts of the code address how I work and relate to people: finish or renegotiate commitments before adding more; distinguish facts from assumptions; invite a serious challenge to my thinking; help other people develop their own judgment; acknowledge a mistake through an effort to repair its consequences.

Those principles have practical implications. Curiosity should include listening to an answer that complicates my preferred explanation. Generosity should include asking what help someone actually wants. Integrity should include correcting an overstatement even when the stronger version would make me look better.

There is no dramatic scene in that kind of development. Much of it consists of noticing a familiar moment and trying to handle it differently.

The clarity I have now¶

The practical center of my October purpose draft is a life of presence, honest relationships, and useful work that improves lives and expands opportunity. It also explicitly makes room for peace and steady attention to the people I care about.

That is more useful to me than a purpose statement organized entirely around professional impact. It gives several parts of life standing in the same decision. It asks whether an opportunity produces useful work, whether the relationships around it can be honest, and whether I can live the daily life I am saying matters.

I still do not have a single job title that resolves all of this. The clarity is about what I want a choice to serve. It helps me ask a better question about a role, a project, or a commitment: what does accepting this make more possible, and what does it make harder to practice?

There is also an important limit. Purpose does not spare me tradeoffs. It makes them visible. I can care about meaningful work and still need sustainable economics. I can want exceptional learning and still need time with the people I love. Saying both out loud is the beginning of a useful decision.

So I built a study of my own career preferences¶

At some point, reflection ran into a measurement problem. I could say I wanted intellectually stimulating work, real customer value, autonomy, excellent people, leadership development, and compelling economics. I wanted all of them. A list of desirable attributes did very little to tell me which package I would actually choose.

I built a personal career conjoint study to make myself confront that question.

The basic idea was to compare hypothetical roles as bundles of features. Instead of rating autonomy or mentorship in isolation, I had to choose between packages. More of one desirable feature could come with less of another. The exercise made it harder to give every good thing the highest possible score.

The first round recorded 24 choices. The revised design then brought seven criteria into the same study, represented by nine visible features:

What I wanted to understand	What the revised study varied
Intellectual stimulation	Novel, ambiguous problems versus familiar problems and established methods
Customer and business value	Direct ownership of measurable outcomes versus an indirect contribution
Autonomy	Authority to decide within a budget versus recommending decisions for approval
Learning	Weekly consequential work with exceptional practitioners versus more occasional access
Leadership development	A small team and explicit P&L accountability versus leadership through influence
The work itself	Investment and deal work, technology commercialization, or operating a business
Sustainable economics	Guaranteed cash, uncertain equity, and working hours, varied separately

The distinction between cash and equity mattered. An illiquid award with an uncertain future is different from income I can depend on. So did the distinction between being near accomplished people and working with them on consequential decisions. The latter is a more specific proposition to evaluate.

The comparisons held other conditions steady, including ethical standards, location, and job security. That made the exercise more interpretable, but it also narrowed what it could tell me. A real opportunity would still need to pass those conditions independently.

I wanted this exercise to interrupt my ability to make every appealing role sound like a good fit. If I was going to be rigorous about a business decision, I could bring some of that rigor to the decision about where to spend my own working life.

What it showed—and what I had failed to ask¶

The recorded analysis of the first round found its clearest directional signals around investment and deal work, larger equity awards, and the highest cash level tested. Within those scenarios, autonomy and mentorship frequency were less decisive. The reversed comparisons were consistent, and the two held-out checks agreed with the model’s predictions across the tested regularization settings.

I take that as evidence worth examining. I do not take it as a complete description of myself.

The original study had not directly varied intellectual stimulation or direct customer value. It had not separately identified leadership development. Those omissions mattered because they included things I said I cared about. A model cannot tell me the value of a distinction I never gave it a chance to observe.

That became one of the most useful lessons of the experiment: the design of the question can limit the apparent answer about who I am. If I leave important features out, the result may look more decisive than the underlying inquiry deserves.

I revised the study to include the missing dimensions alongside compensation and hours. The new design included held-out comparisons and reversed repeats, and kept the earlier choices as a historical record. The old answers could not honestly be treated as answers to questions that had displayed different information.

There is a character lesson in that, too. I need to be willing to improve the instrument even when its first answer is interesting. Self-knowledge is poorly served by defending a result simply because I helped produce it.

A preferred option can still be a no¶

The study separated two questions: which role did I prefer, and would I actually take it rather than keep searching?

In a later response, I preferred A and still chose to decline and keep searching. That small distinction carries a lot of information about the decision, even though it does not establish the reason for the refusal.

Choosing A over B only orders the two offers in front of me. It does not establish that either one crosses an acceptable threshold. Without the acceptance question, I could mistake the winner of a weak comparison for work I actually wanted to do.

I also have to resist making rejection into a flattering story. A refusal could reflect a real constraint, an omitted feature, uncertainty, or an unrealistic expectation. The choice alone cannot distinguish those explanations. I have to ask what would need to change, then test whether my answer survives a more concrete opportunity.

This is why I am cautious about the phrase “my true preferences.” I am trying to learn what I value under actual constraints, in a particular season of life, with the information I currently have. I expect some of that to be stable. I expect some of it to change as I learn more about the work and myself.

A personal conjoint study can give me sharper hypotheses. Conversations, small projects, and the experience of doing the work still have to test them.

Character and preference answer different questions¶

The two strands of this work now meet in my career decisions. The conjoint study asks which combinations of work and conditions I prefer. My code asks how I want to live and behave, including when a preference pulls me in a less admirable direction.

That distinction matters. A strong preference is information; it does not automatically become a principle. Wanting recognition, autonomy, money, or proximity to exceptional people tells me something to examine. It does not settle what I owe the people affected by my choices.

I want to use the career evidence to ask more precise questions. What decisions would I actually own? What would a normal week contain? Where would the customer see my contribution? What would I learn by doing the work? What promises would I have to keep, and could I keep them without continually borrowing time from the rest of my life?

Then I want to make a choice and give it a fair chance. Endless analysis can preserve the pleasure of possibility while postponing responsibility for an actual path. One of my commitments is to choose a few priorities and follow through. The research should eventually help me do that.

What remains unfinished¶

I still have work to do on presence, patience, and the number of commitments I make. Writing those words does not establish that I have improved. A good explanation of my principles is evidence that I can explain them. Progress needs to show up in what other people experience and what I repeatedly do.

The review I want is simple enough to survive a difficult week. Where did I make room for peace? Did I give the people I care about my attention? Which commitment did I complete or honestly renegotiate? Where did I listen to correction? What needs repair?

I am wary of turning that review into another performance contest. Self-compassion belongs in the code because a missed day needs an honest response and another attempt. Shame would add very little useful information.

The change I can describe today is a more concrete direction. My purpose has moved closer to the scale of a decision and an ordinary day. My career preferences have become questions I can test. My virtues have become commitments I can examine when they are inconvenient.

I want to keep building ambitious things. I also want to recognize myself in the way I build them, and to be present for the life happening alongside the work.

That is the unfinished part. Tomorrow gives me another chance to practice it.

A note on the record¶

This essay draws on my Code of Daily Living, revised October 21, 2026; CCL’s Drafting Phrases and Drafting Principles exercises; and the Career Conjoint Results record dated October 16, 2026. The code’s daily principles are paraphrased here for a public audience. The CCL templates contain examples from other participants; those examples are not my biography, personality assessment, or purpose statement.

The career record preserves 24 original choices and a revised 24-comparison design. The first-round findings concern the original design only. The later preferred-but-declined response is a separate observation, not a completed analysis of the revised study. I am not reporting a validated ranking of all nine features, exact monetary tradeoffs, or an explanation for every refusal. The experiment remains a tool for inquiry, and this account remains open to revision.