You wake up, look at the day ahead and cannot find one thing in it that seems worth doing. Life feels pointless, and everyone else seems to have something they care about. What do you do when life feels pointless? Start small, and stop waiting for a passion to arrive, because the waiting itself may be part of the problem.
If you're thinking about harming yourself, contact your local emergency services now. If you only feel flat, keep reading.
In 2018, three researchers tested the most common advice there is. Find your passion. Across five studies, they found that the advice itself may backfire (O'Keefe, Dweck and Walton, 2018).
In the last study, they pushed some people to believe that interests are fixed and waiting to be found. They pushed others to believe that interests are grown. Then the new interest got hard. The "fixed" group lost interest significantly faster.
If you are asking what the point of it all is, and you have no passion to point to, that finding matters. It means the missing passion may not be the problem. The waiting might be. This article has six findings, each one changing the picture a little more, and then a plan for an ordinary Tuesday.
Telling yourself to find a passion may make your interest fade faster
Most of us picture passion like a lost wallet. It is somewhere out there, and one day you will spot it. Until then you wait, and the waiting feels like proof that something is wrong with you.
The 2018 studies point at a hidden cost of that picture. People who held the "fixed" view were less interested in areas outside what they already liked. They also expected that a found passion would bring endless motivation, and they did not expect it to be difficult. When the new interest got hard, their interest flagged more than it did for people who believed interests are developed.
The authors put it neatly. Urging people to find their passion may lead them to put all their eggs in one basket, and then drop the basket when it gets heavy.
These were controlled experiments, and the mindset was nudged in a lab. They show how the belief works. They do not prove it explains your last ten years. But they do change the question. "Why can't I find my passion?" becomes "Why am I waiting for one to arrive finished?"
The next idea explains why the waiting feels so empty.
Having meaning and looking for meaning are two different things
In 2006, Steger and colleagues built a short questionnaire with 10 items. Its key move was to measure two things separately. One is the presence of meaning, which is how meaningful your life feels. The other is the search for meaning, which is how hard you are looking.
That split is easy to miss. We talk as if the search and the feeling are one line, so that more searching must lead to more meaning. The questionnaire treats them as two dials. You can turn one up without moving the other.
My reading is that searching mostly happens in your head. You can read, scroll and journal all day and still feel nothing arrive. The later findings point to meaning coming from somewhere else.
First, a correction that works in your favour.
Does feeling that nothing matters mean your life is pointless?
In 2014, Heintzelman and King reviewed the research on how meaningful life is in general. They looked at epidemiological data and at studies using two common questionnaires. In diverse samples, people on average rated their lives significantly above the midpoint. Their title says it plainly, "Life is pretty meaningful."
That is an average, so it says nothing about you today. It does say something about the feeling. If most people sit above the midpoint, then feeling at the bottom is a signal that something in this stretch of your life has gone quiet. It is not proof that life holds no meaning for anyone. A signal can be answered.
Which raises the useful question. What exactly has gone quiet?
Meaning has three parts, and each has a Tuesday version
Martela and Steger (2016) argued that "meaning in life" is really three things that researchers had been lumping together. Coherence is a sense that your life makes sense. Purpose is a sense of goals and direction. Significance is a sense that your life matters and is worth living.
Nobody can build all three in one afternoon. But you can feel which one is thinnest, and each one has a small move.
Notice that none of the moves asks for a passion. They ask for a story, an aim and an act. That leads to the finding that changes the most.
Meaning goes with giving, and happiness goes with taking
In 2013, Baumeister and colleagues ran a large survey that asked what separates a happy life from a meaningful one. The two overlap, but the survey found real differences. Satisfying your needs and wants raised happiness, and it was largely irrelevant to meaning. Happiness went with being a taker. Meaningfulness went with being a giver. People who reported more worry and stress also reported more meaning, though less happiness.
It is a survey, so it shows a link and not a cause. Still, look at what it does to the word "passion." Passion usually means something that makes you feel good. If meaning mostly comes from giving, then waiting for something that feels good is waiting at the wrong door.
Now read "I have no passion" again. It may only mean nothing is currently feeding your appetite. That is a different sentence from "nothing I do can matter."
A plan beats a mood, even when the mood is flat
The last piece is the one that makes Tuesday matter. I put it in my own book this way. The less you do, the less you're able to do. Waiting to feel like it before you act keeps you where you are.
The best evidence for the other direction comes from depression research, and I'll be clear about what it is. Cuijpers and colleagues (2007) pooled 16 randomised studies with 780 people. In activity scheduling, people track their mood and their days, and then deliberately add more pleasant activities and more positive contact with others. Compared with control groups, the pooled effect was 0.87, which is large. Compared with cognitive therapy, the difference was 0.02, essentially none.
That is a result about depression treatment, not about the feeling that life is pointless. The two overlap, though, and the lesson transfers in a modest way. Doing things on a plan, before the mood arrives, is a method with a track record. You do not need to feel like it first. The fuller story of that treatment is in the study where depressed people still found cartoons funny.
What to do on an ordinary Tuesday
Here is the plan in six small steps. Each says what to do and why.
1. Check the floor first. If your mood has been low, or you have felt numb, on most days for two weeks or more, see a doctor. Flatness can have many causes, some of them medical, and those need checking, not philosophising. If the flatness is the main thing, this piece on emotional numbness goes deeper. The honest check-in is a quick way to see where you stand. It is a check and not a diagnosis.
2. Lower the bar from passion to curiosity. Pick one thing that is only mildly interesting, such as a walk somewhere new, a recipe or a book chapter. Do it for the sake of doing it, with no plan to share it. Then expect it to get hard or boring at some point. In the 2018 studies, that was the moment people who believed interests are fixed lost interest, so plan to stay for five minutes past it.
3. Put it in the calendar before the mood arrives. Schedule three small things for the week, one for your body, one with a person and one for the future. Treat them like a dentist appointment. If you keep missing your own plans, the piece on why intention and action drift so far apart explains why, and what closes the gap.
4. Give something away. Pick one act of giving that costs you under an hour. Help a neighbour, answer a stranger's question, cook for someone, or teach what you know. The giver finding suggests this is where meaning tends to come from, so treat it as an experiment and notice what changes.
5. Write the vision page. Take a sheet of paper and answer five questions in a few lines each. What do I value? What do I want in one year, and in ten? What stands in the way? What am I willing to sacrifice? Which of my strengths could I use? Plain answers beat impressive ones, and you can redo the page in a month.
6. Choose who you are voting to become. Finish the sentence "I'm someone who..." with one thing you actually did this week, such as "I'm someone who walked when I didn't feel like it." I find that who you are is shaped less by a feeling about yourself and more by the small things you repeat. Identity is built from evidence, and you are supplying it.
If everyone around you seems to have a passion already, remember the comparison scoreboard only shows you their highlights.
How far to trust all this
Most of these studies are surveys, questionnaires or reviews of them, so they show links and not causes. The 2018 work used lab nudges to change mindsets, and a nudge is not a lifetime. The activity scheduling results come from people with depression, not from people who feel pointless. No study here proves the plan will work for you.
If the flatness has lasted for weeks, or the thought of not being here comes back, please talk to a doctor, a therapist or a local crisis line. I studied clinical psychology, but I am not your therapist, and some weights are too heavy to carry alone.
For everyone else, the idea that meaning is out there waiting was never a fact. It was a belief, and the research suggests it is a costly one. You are not a person who failed to find meaning. You are a person who has not yet started making it, and Tuesday is a good day to start.
Sources
Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., Aaker, J. L., & Garbinsky, E. N. (2013). Some key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 8(6), 505-516. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2013.830764
Cuijpers, P., van Straten, A., & Warmerdam, L. (2007). Behavioral activation treatments of depression: A meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 27(3), 318-326. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2006.11.001
Heintzelman, S. J., & King, L. A. (2014). Life is pretty meaningful. American Psychologist, 69(6), 561-574. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035049
Martela, F., & Steger, M. F. (2016). The three meanings of meaning in life: Distinguishing coherence, purpose, and significance. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 11(5), 531-545. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2015.1137623
O'Keefe, P. A., Dweck, C. S., & Walton, G. M. (2018). Implicit theories of interest: Finding your passion or developing it? Psychological Science, 29(10), 1653-1664. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618780643
Steger, M. F., Frazier, P., Oishi, S., & Kaler, M. (2006). The Meaning in Life Questionnaire: Assessing the presence of and search for meaning in life. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 53(1), 80-93. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.53.1.80