Core 05: Purpose Grows Through Constraints, Not Necessarily More Resources
There is a sentence most of us have said at some point, and it usually starts with “if I just had more…”
More time…
More money…
More freedom from the obligations pulling at me from every direction…
Sometimes we think that if we just had more of that (time, money, freedom, etc.), then we would be able to live with more purpose.
And even though this is something we often say to ourselves, it’s misguided and inaccurate.
Not because time, money, and freedom are unimportant (they are…), but because the assumption underneath the statement is flawed.
The assumption is that living a purposeful life needs ideal conditions, that intentional living is something you get to once we have fewer constraints.
But what if the constraints are not the obstacle? What if they are the very thing that helps to produce the clarity you’re looking for?
The Paradox of Choice
We tend to believe that having more options and resources lead to better outcomes:
More career paths mean a better chance of finding the right one.
More free time means more opportunity to do meaningful things.
More financial margin means more capacity to live generously and fulfilled.
But the research tells a different story. Barry Schwartz documented what he called the paradox of choice: as options increase, satisfaction tends to decrease. More choices lead to more anxiety, more second-guessing, and more paralysis. The person standing in front of 30 options often walks away with nothing. The person with three options chooses and moves forward.
I referenced Oliver Burkeman previously, but it’s worth repeating here, because he pushes this idea further. In Four Thousand Weeks, he argues that the average human life is radically finite, roughly 4,000 weeks, and that the path to meaning is not necessarily expanding your capacity to do more, but accepting your limitation and choosing well within it. The fantasy of “someday when I have more time” is not just unrealistic, but a way of avoiding the discomfort of choosing what to do with the time you actually have…which is today.
Unlimited options and resources don’t necessarily produce purposeful living. And if we’re being honest, more often than not it produces drift. Because when you can do anything, you end up doing whatever feels easiest in the moment. And what feels easiest isn’t the best choice when you consider that your life is the dash between two numbers.
Constraints Force a Different Question
When resources are limited, you have to decide what matters. There is no getting around it.
This is true of time. It is true of money. It is true of energy and attention. And it is true whether you are living paycheck to paycheck or sitting on generational wealth. Even the wealthiest people alive still only have 24 hours in a day. Constraints are universal. The only question is how you view and live within your constraints.
Neil Postman wrote decades ago about a culture that was “amusing itself to death,” a society so flooded with entertainment options that it stopped asking why it was consuming what it consumed. That observation is exponentially more relevant now than when he wrote it. We have more content, more streaming platforms, more ways to fill time than any generation in history. And the result is not enrichment. It’s numbness.
I ran into this in my own life recently. I was out with friends and we were talking about the shows/movies they are watching. It struck me that I did not have much to add. This wasn’t because I think TV is wrong or that I don’t watch TV, but because with starting BFAP I have had to make choices.
Between my full-time job, my family, working out, reading, building BFAP, and a myriad of other things, there is simply not enough time for everything. Something has to get displaced. And for me, the thing that I realized that needed displacement was passive entertainment. I have found that the less TV I watch and the less I scroll social media, the more time I have for the things that are actually building something: a blog post that might help someone, a few chapters in a book that reshapes how I think, a conversation with my wife (or a friend) that would not have happened if I were staring at a screen.
I am not saying this to sound impressive or for you to think that I have it all together. I am saying it because the tradeoff was not obvious until I started paying attention to where my time was going. And the constraint of limited time is what forced the clarity. I did not have the luxury of doing everything, so I had to decide what mattered most.
That is what constraints do. They surface your priorities by removing the illusion that you can have it all.
Faithfulness With What You Have
There is a parable Jesus told about a master who entrusted three servants with different amounts before leaving on a journey. One received five talents, another two, and another one. The first two invested what they were given and doubled it. The third buried his out of fear.
When the master returned, he did not evaluate the servants based on how much they started with. He evaluated them based on what they did with what they had.
The servant with two talents was praised just as highly as the servant with five. Because faithfulness is not measured by the size of your resources. It is measured by what you do within the constraints you have been given.
This reframes the whole conversation.
The question is not “Do I have enough to live purposefully?” Hint…you do. The question is “Am I stewarding what I have, or am I burying it while I wait for more?”
Your 24 hours are a constraint. Your income is a constraint. Your season of life, your responsibilities, your physical capacity, even your talents. All constraints. And none of them disqualify you from living with purpose. They are the raw materials that purpose is built from.
The Pushback…and Then a Different Perspective
I know what some of you may be thinking…because I’ve thought the same thing. Easy for you to say. You do not know my situation. My constraints are not the same as yours. The constraints I have are the kind that grind a person down.
That is fair. And I am not going to pretend that every constraint feels like a gift. Some limitations are genuinely painful. Financial stress, health problems, caregiving responsibilities, or a job that leaves you with almost nothing at the end of the day.
Here is what I have observed, in my own life and in the lives of people around me: the people who wait for ideal conditions rarely start. But the people who start to realize and acknowledge their constraints, imperfectly, with limited time and energy and resources, are the ones who actually build something.
Purpose does not require perfect conditions. It requires faithfulness within the ones you have. And sometimes the most purposeful thing you can do is show up with whatever you have today, even if it is less than you wish it were.
Where in your life have you been resenting a constraint that might actually be shaping you?
Where are you waiting for ideal conditions before you start living intentionally?
What would change if you stopped seeing your limitations as obstacles and started seeing them as the thing that forces you to choose a path?
Purpose is not built in wide-open spaces. It is forged in the tension between what you want to do and what you are actually able to do.
The constraints are not in the way.
They are the way.
