If you've attached purpose to what you're doing in life then "all the research would show" you're probably more self-directed, have better relationships with your peers, are more engaged, and have a better mental buffer against the effects of stress.

Klein says: stress can often be a motivating energy to achieve goals if you can see how those goals accord with your own sense of purpose in life. But "when you hit adversity, you're like, why am I doing this? And if you don't have a meaningful answer to that, then that leads to [a sense of] meaninglessness, which can [manifest as] depression, anxiety, all of those things"

A sense of purpose is also a decision-making tool: a compass that can help keep you on track and aligned with your values when making important life choices.

The challenge, of course, is knowing what is personally meaningful to you - the contribution you want to make to the world, and how to spot opportunities to make those contributions.

we've never taught people how to decide what to do with their lives. We tellthem what to do - get your grades, all of that stuff. But we've never taught them how to decide

essentially purpose becomes using my strength and skills to make a positive impact that aligns with my core values.

how do you want to be remembered?

how do you want to grow as a person?

what do I want to stand for, and what am I willing to sacrifice in doing so?

what impact do I want to make? What problems do I want to solve?

what would make today feel purposeful?

Being able to "tell the narrative of why we're doing what we're doing" is really important for a sense of coherence and meaning in our lives

By asking his students to capture and collect all their learnings and experiences in one folderless digital space, Klein is hopeful that they’ll be better equipped to find coherence across their lives.

“The easier it is to make a coherent jump between one thing you’re doing and then the next, the more purposeful your work’s going to feel; the harder it is, the more you’re going to question everything, you know?”

“You’re always more unreal to yourself than other people are”, Marguerite Duras once said - meaning that the sense of a solid, consistent identity is only a function of external observation.  But maybe less so in the world of enhanced introspection that Klein envisions.