Most of us carry a long list of things we want. A better body. More money. Deeper love. Travel. Creative work. Time in nature. All of it feels important, so none of it gets our full attention.

This tool sorts the list for you. Not by asking what you want, everything is on that list. It asks something harder. If you could only have one, which would it be?

Your passions are not your purpose. Passions come and go. They shift every few months. Your purpose is the theme running underneath all of them, and you have never once stopped living it.

What surfaces here is a snapshot of today. Six months from now it will look different, and that is exactly how it should work. When something gets close to fully alive in your life, it stops being a passion and just becomes what is.

• Make your listFinish this sentence as many times as you can. My life is ideal when I'm… Ten to fifteen is a good number. Don't edit. Don't rank. Just write.
• Choose, one pair at a timeThe tool will hold up two items and ask which matters more. You get to have both in real life. For the next few minutes, pretend you don't.
• Watch what survivesFive will rise to the top. Some will surprise you. The surprise is the useful part.
• Rate where you areFor each of your five, how alive is it right now, zero to a hundred? Anything under fifty is where your attention wants to go.
• Look for the threadRead your five out loud. What word keeps showing up? That repeating word is pointing at something bigger than any item on the list.

Keep the five somewhere you will see them. When a decision comes up, a job, a move, a relationship, a purchase, run it against the list. Does this bring me closer to any of these five? A yes makes the choice easy. A no makes it easier.

Takes about twenty minutes on your own. Nothing you type is saved or sent anywhere. Revisit it every six months and see what has changed.