Synthetic purpose is an idea that Justin Welsh wrote about a few weeks back and I haven't been able to stop thinking about.
He described his morning ritual of opening Claude, running the same financial spreadsheets he's run hundreds of times, already knowing the answers, and doing it anyway. He named it synthetic purpose → manufacturing the feeling of working on something important when the actual work is already done.
His concept is about people who've solved the big problem and can't stop inventing new ones to fill the silence.
But I think the problem runs deeper than that.
I think most of us never even get to Justin's version, because we're too busy performing busyness to notice we haven't solved anything real at all.
The Badge We Never Questioned
We live in a hustle culture that treats busy like a virtue.
"How are you?" "Busy." Said with a sigh that's 30% complaint, 70% brag.
Busy has become shorthand for important. And if you're not busy, something must be wrong with you: you're lazy, you're behind, you're not trying hard enough. So we fill the calendar.
And at the end of the day we collapse into bed feeling productive, which is not the same thing as feeling like we did something that mattered. But we're too tired to notice the difference.
The uncomfortable part of that sentence isn't the second half. It's the first. Almost everything. Including, quite possibly, whatever filled your last three hours.
“I had 8 proverbial campfires on my desk every day to tend to, but no bonfires.” - Matthew McConaughey
My LinkedIn Quarter
In Q1 2026, I posted to LinkedIn every single day. Structured content, themed weeks, varied post formats; even made videos…yuck, gross, barf. I built such a system around it that it felt like serious, intentional, strategic work.
But when I sat down and reviewed the analytics at the end of the quarter, the story they told me was a vastly different one. Zero lead conversions a strategy does not make.
My version of synthetic purpose with a content calendar attached to it.
I've since switched to a simple rule: I post when I actually have something to say…usually it is just nonsense, but it is real and it is me.
The Identity Problem
"Ego tells us that meaning comes from activity, that being the center of attention is the only way to matter." - Ryan Holiday
Here's what Justin surfaced that I think gets missed in the typical "stop being so busy" conversation → it comes down to identity and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.
Justin writes: "When I don't have a big problem to solve, I'm not sure who I am."
And this line from Tony Robbins sticks with me: "Identity is this incredible invisible force that controls your whole life. It's invisible, like gravity is invisible, but it controls your whole life."
Most of us have built our sense of self around what we do, not who we are. And when the doing stops (or slows)...or in my case produces no visible result…the identity wobbles. So we manufacture more doing to stabilize it.
The busyness trap is built from the scaffolding holding up a self-concept that was never finished.
"If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will." - Greg McKeown
Ponder This
- What would your day look like if you removed everything that felt productive but produced nothing?
- If the tasks disappeared tomorrow, would you know who you were without them?
Books/Newsletters
- The Saturday Solopreneur - Justin Welsh
- Essentialism - Greg McKeown
- Greenlight - Matthew McConaughey
- Ego Is The Enemy - Ryan Holiday
- Giant Steps - Tony Robbins
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