Figuring out what I want to do with the rest of my life vlog - Personal values, vision & purpose

A mid-year reset turns the question “What do I want to do with the rest of my life?” into a practical sequence: identify personal values, translate them into daily choices, then use purpose (via ikigai) and a concrete vision to guide work decisions—especially when multiple career paths compete.

The process starts with values, using a values-ranking exercise from a site called Personal Values (personalvalues.es). After narrowing a long list to a top five, the key test is alignment: when day-to-day actions match what matters, life tends to feel better in the long run; when actions repeatedly clash with values, unhappiness grows and can create a feedback loop. Her top five values are health, creativity, curiosity, success, and pleasure. Health is the most neglected when her workload spikes—she’s in the final stretch of a PhD and also runs a speech and drama school in Dublin with nine employees and about 150 students. That neglect shows up as unhappiness, which then makes it even harder to prioritize health. Creativity shows up through teaching, directing performances, reading, content creation, and research as “creative problem solving.” Curiosity is tied to lifelong learning, trying new experiences (food, places), and problem-solving interests like true crime and thrillers. Success is treated as a double-edged value: it matters, but it shouldn’t crowd out other values because happiness shouldn’t depend on something uncertain. Pleasure is defined less as vague fun and more as peak enjoyment—quality time with partner, family, and friends; reading; and experiences like travel and good food. A recent trip to Galway becomes a concrete example of pleasure in action: time with her dad and stepmom, new places in Ireland, a fish restaurant, a movie, exercise and a home spa, and finishing two books.

From values, the reset moves to purpose using ikigai, a Japanese framework built on the intersection of what someone likes, what they’re good at, what the world needs, and what can be earned. The central warning is about common traps: chasing money alone often fails to deliver long-term fulfillment, while doing only what feels good can leave income too thin to sustain a life. Her own situation highlights the tension. She could pursue computer science work after her PhD—potentially a high-paying job in the United States—but fears it would feel like a letdown after nine years of study, and she expects she’d miss the research thread. Meanwhile, speech and drama teaching may not pay enough to be a sole long-term income yet.

She then sketches how to build an ikigai list in actionable terms: write “things you like,” “things you’re good at,” “things the world needs,” and “things you can get paid for,” then look for overlaps. Her emerging candidate purpose sits at the intersection of her research in recommender systems and her arts background: applying machine learning to areas tied to health, productivity, education, and hobbies, and—importantly—addressing the gig-economy instability facing arts workers. She also considers combining data analytics with communication/content creation, even imagining bringing data-driven tools into the art or speech-and-drama space.

Finally, she sets a vision for the future using an “ideal day” rather than a gravestone exercise. The vision is broken into morning, workday, evening, and recreation—what’s on the calendar, what routines exist, and what the business looks like. Her ideal day includes early gym time, healthy breakfast, meditation and journaling, yoga and reading at night, and quality time with loved ones. For work, she imagines a dedicated drama-school office space where she can scale the business, teach, and integrate literature and her research—while acknowledging uncertainty from trustees and possible company structure changes. If that path shifts, she keeps alternatives open: a home-office model focused on recommender systems applications, potentially in partnership with a university or as self-employment. The recreation vision centers on hikes, weekend getaways, and travel—ideally with more flexibility and choice rather than being locked into full-time work.

The takeaway is that values, purpose, and vision aren’t abstract life-coaching concepts; they’re decision tools. They help reduce low-value time sinks like mindless scrolling, replace them with activities that serve long-term happiness, and set goals that move toward a specific future—even when the next step is still uncertain.