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Join us for an inspiring conversation with Jordan Grumet, internal medicine physician and host of the Earn & Invest Podcast, as we explore insights from his groundbreaking book, The Purpose Code: How to Unlock Meaning, Maximize Happiness, and Leave a Lasting Legacy. Discover the surprising truths about purpose, how to overcome purpose anxiety, and why small, meaningful goals can transform your life.
Jordan Grumet is an internal medicine physician and host of the Earn & Invest Podcast.
He discusses the book, The Purpose Code: How to unlock meaning, maximize happiness, and leave a lasting legacy.
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Transcript
Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Today, we welcome back an old friend, Jordan Grumet. He is an internal medicine physician, host of The Earn and Invest podcast,” and we’re going to talk about his new book today, The Purpose Code: How to unlock meaning, maximize happiness, and leave a lasting legacy. Jordan, it’s great to see you again.
Jordan Grumet: It is so great to see you, man, Kevin, what—we’ve known each other 20-something years, maybe 20. I know that’s like since the beginning of the whole physician social media era. Yeah. Yeah. It goes quickly, doesn’t it?
Kevin Pho: All right. So you’re the author of multiple books. You’re a speaker, you’re on my speakers bureau and I know that you’re a wonderful speaker. You have your own podcast as well, so just how is life in the physician media space?
Jordan Grumet: You know, it’s evolved. And so I started in the physician media space when I was a full-time doctor working 60 hours a week. Since then, I discovered financial independence, transitioned out, and moved maybe from what I’d call back in the day the physician blogosphere to the general interest self-help and personal finance space. What’s exciting for me is I actually learned over time that doing this kind of stuff probably more aligns with my true sense of purpose than being a doctor ever did. But it took me years and years to realize that this stuff lit me up much more than, for instance, seeing patients.
Kevin Pho: And your latest book, which is released this month, The Purpose Code: How to unlock meaning, maximize happiness, and leave a lasting legacy. Tell us the events that led you to write about this book in the first place.
Jordan Grumet: Interestingly enough. When I transitioned outside of medicine and started talking about personal finance, there were a lot of questions that went unanswered in the personal finance world. A lot of times I spoke to people about how we accumulate wealth or build a business or strive for financial independence. But when I asked my guests on my podcast, well, why are you doing this? Or, when is enough? Like, when do I have enough money? I get a lot of blank stares.
And so I wrote my first book, Taking Stock, which was all about what the dying could teach us about money and life, because I’m still a hospice doctor, and I hear about the regrets of the dying. I thought there was some really great information for us young people who weren’t dying about the place and the role money plays in our lives.
I went to market that book. And a big essential premise of it was that we should be putting purpose first before our money and build a financial framework around it. But when I went to market that book, all sorts of people came up to me after my talks, and they were angry, which had never happened to me before. They would say some version of, you keep on telling me to find my purpose, or consider purpose when it comes to money, but I’ve been looking forever—I have no idea what my purpose is. Will you please stop asking me about purpose?
This, of course, made me do a deep dive into literature. What I found—and there are tons of studies—is that having a sense of purpose in life is associated with health, happiness, and longevity. It’s very clear. Tons and tons of studies. But I also found other studies that showed that up to 91 percent of people at some point in their life have what’s called purpose anxiety—this idea that purpose makes people anxious and depressed and frustrated. That, to me, was a paradox, and what I realized is that probably we get purpose wrong. We think of it as one thing, and it’s probably two, and one of those things, what I call big P purpose, is probably associated with a lot of that frustration, whereas the other, little P purpose, is probably more associated with that health, happiness, and longevity. And so I wanted to write this book to make it as clear as a lot of the things I talk about with personal finances: like, there’s a way to pursue purpose, and you can do this in a healthy manner, and it doesn’t have to be confusing.
Kevin Pho: Yeah. So whenever I talk to some physicians, and these physicians are burnt out, a lot of the things that they say is find your purpose, right? And sometimes that’s easier said than done. So I’m glad I have you on to talk specifically about that. So let me ask you the obvious question: what exactly is purpose? And you talked about the big P purpose and the little P purpose. Just give us a framework and a definition so we know what we’re talking about here.
Jordan Grumet: So I think this is where people actually really make the big mistake, because colloquially, purpose is the why of what we do. But the problem with the why is it turns us into this big audacious thing—big P purpose—meaning it’s got to be the essential and essential reason I’m doing everything I do, which leads to impact and legacy. It’s got to change the world, and it’s got to be really important, especially in American culture, right? If you can dream it, you can build it. So our sense of purpose—we feel like if we’re talking about our why, our why has to be really, really big.
I actually think that’s the wrong definition of purpose. Purpose is simply the actions we take in the present and future that light us up. And so it has nothing to do with our why; it’s actually what we do in the here and now that makes us happy. A lot of the reasons we get purpose anxiety is when we start thinking about the why, we start thinking that I either find this big audacious thing that’s going to make the world better, or I don’t. And so if I find it, everything is great and the world is good. If I don’t find it, I’m a failure and everything is lost. And that causes people a huge amount of anxiety.
Kevin Pho: So give us some examples—and you briefly alluded to your own purpose about how you transitioned outside of clinical medicine to do this physician media, things on personal finance, and finding your purpose. That’s a fantastic example. What are other examples that you’ve talked to—maybe some of your guests, some of your colleagues, some other physicians—about how they successfully found their purpose according to the framework that we described?
Jordan Grumet: So first, let me describe the difference between big P purpose and little P purpose. So big P purpose, the kind that’s anxiety provoking, tends to be very goal oriented. And like I said, it’s big and audacious—think I want to be a billionaire, I want to be president, I want a seven-figure business. These are all really big things that a lot of times we don’t necessarily have agency to get there. You have to be the right person at the right time, saying the right things with the right genetics and a whole lot of luck. And a lot of times we just don’t have all those things aligned. So it’s very much all or nothing, and it’s very easy to fail. And this is why it makes people feel frustrated.
On the other hand, let’s talk about little P purpose—it’s more process oriented. So we’re not worried about goals as much as I want to do things that light me up while I’m doing them. And so this is very abundant. I think of big P purpose as very scarcity-mindset oriented, because only a few people are going to get there. But little P purpose is very abundant. It’s very difficult to fail. You just try a bunch of things and see what you like. So as opposed to being all or nothing, it’s very much all or all.
Let’s talk about some examples—and it’s easiest to just use myself as an example. I love podcasting. I love getting in front of the mic and interviewing people. That is very much a little P purpose. I love the process, and at the end of the day, if no one listens to my podcast, it was still an hour that was really well used because I really loved it and it lit me up.
But I could turn that into big P purpose. I could say, well, I love podcasting, but what I’d really like to do is have a million downloads every month. Now, to get to a million downloads every month, there are a bunch of things I have to do—and some of them, I have to tell you the truth, I probably won’t like doing. Like, I’m not a big fan of Instagram and TikTok, but if you want to be successful as a podcaster today, you should probably be making TikTok videos, you should be putting reels on Instagram, you should be doing a bunch of marketing things that I don’t like. And so I could spend a lot of time doing these things I don’t like to reach this goal of getting a million downloads a month.
If I get there, I spent a lot of my time doing things I didn’t like doing, but hey, I got to the goal. I might be excited for a short period of time, but you and I know what happens once you reach a goal. A lot of times, within a few weeks, you hedonically adapt back down to your baseline level of happiness, and then you’re like, well, what am I going to do now? I’m going to double down, right? So it’s not going to be a million; I’m going to have to get to two million.
But the other side is what if I never get there, right? What if I’m just not the right person saying the right things, and I get to 100,000 downloads a month, never get to a million—I’m going to be frustrated too. A lot of that is really out of my control. So that’s what big audacious purpose looks like, whereas little P purpose is much more like, hey, I’m going to enjoy doing this. Maybe I’ll build in some incremental goals, like I want to become a better interviewer, so maybe I’ll listen to the top interviewers and check out their technique, or maybe I’ll go to a public speaking class or something like that. Those are all things I can control; I have agency over them. They can build in incremental gain, as opposed to these kind of huge audacious goals.
So that’s the difference we’re talking about. For me, becoming a doctor actually was a big audacious goal, probably not for the reason you think. When I was seven years old, my dad died, and because I was seven, I looked at the world through my lens, and he was a physician. So he died suddenly—in fact, he died while he was rounding in the hospital. I thought I could cosmically make up for his death and relieve me of responsibility—because remember, I was seven, so I thought I was responsible for everything—and relieve me of that responsibility by becoming a doctor. That became my big P purpose, and it took me 20 years to get there. And guess what? I got there, and it didn’t solve the problem. My dad still died. I still didn’t feel better. All I found out was that working really hard as a doctor can burn you out very easily, especially when it no longer feels purposeful.
Kevin Pho: I love that framework. So you have the big P purpose being more goal oriented and a little P purpose that fills your cup, being more process oriented. Now, what kind of questions should one ask themselves to find that little P purpose? Do you have a strategy or some type of method in order for physicians or anyone reading your book or talking to you to find some of their little P purposes?
Jordan Grumet: So this is what I love, because first and foremost, I say you don’t find your purpose—you build or create it. So it’s a very active process. It’s all about action, remember—action in the present and future. But it is true, we have to have these inklings or these beckonings of purposeful things in our life. What lights us up? I call those purpose anchors. So what we’re really asking is, how do I connect to these purpose anchors in my life so I can build a life of purpose around them?
And there are some really simple techniques. I talk about three or four of them in the book. Let me quickly run through a few of them for you. So one is the life review—and if you guys have heard me talk about my book, Taking Stock, I talk a lot about the life review. It’s something we do with hospice patients at the end of their life. We give them a structured series of questions to review their life, their biggest accomplishments, biggest goals, biggest failures, most important moments, most important people in their life. And a lot of times, we talk about regret. And so I really want to focus on regret here. Regret is a great way to consider what could be a purpose anchor in your life. So if you can sit there and say, if I found out I was going to die next week, what would I regret never having the energy, courage, or time to do? We can flip that around and turn that into a purpose anchor, because you are not dying next week—you actually have some agency to start building a life of purpose around that. So thinking about regrets is a really good way to identify some purpose anchors.
The next is to think back about the joys of childhood. Kids often pursue purpose without any concerns, right? They go out, they play basketball or cops and robbers or whatever they do all day long, they lose track of time, they forget to come home for dinner. That is very purposeful for them. But then they get older, and they get told that they have to make a living, and they have to think about their career, and they kind of drop all those things. So I always tell people, what were the trophies in your room as a kid? What were the posters? What were the drawings? There could be an inkling of purpose there—there could be a purpose anchor. So that’s a second way.
A third way is to look at work. A lot of people don’t like their jobs. Let’s say you’re a physician, you’re feeling really burnt out. I call it the art of subtraction. Let’s get rid of everything you don’t like at your work and see what’s left. That’s exactly what I did. I was getting burnt out in medicine. I got rid of my clinic and the nursing homework and the nights and the weekends. And you know what I was left with? I was left with hospice work, and I realized I would do hospice work even if I wasn’t being paid for it. So I used the art of subtraction—I got rid of everything I didn’t like, and I was left with a purpose anchor, which was hospice.
And so those are three really good ways: thinking about regret, thinking about the joys of childhood, using the art of subtraction at work. And last but not least, if none of that works, I call it the spaghetti method—throw a bunch of spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. Say yes to people you normally don’t say yes to, do activities you normally don’t do, maybe do something that makes you feel a little uncomfortable. And at the end of the day, did that light you up? Was it exciting? Would you want to do more things around whatever you did that day? If so, that could also be a purpose anchor.
Kevin Pho: So it sounds like this systematic way to define one’s purpose can help with this phenomenon of physician burnout. You mentioned that several times in your story. So specifically for those physicians who are listening to you right now, how can distributing one’s purpose into your framework help with potential physician burnout?
Jordan Grumet: So let’s first talk about burnout. A lot of times, burnout actually is the result of pursuing a purpose that no longer feels like it fits you, right? So a lot of us, just like me, when I realized I wasn’t going to cosmically make up for my father’s death, I was just working 60 hours a week at something that didn’t fill my cup, and so that very much burnt me out. So the question then becomes, if you’re in this position, you feel burnt out, how do we start bringing more purpose into our life so we can be less burnt out?
This is what I always tell people: you’ve got some levers available to you to make a more purposeful life, and the three main levers are the joy of addition, the art of subtraction, and substitution. So you’re working your 60 hours a week, and you’re feeling burnt out. There are a few things you can do. One is you could add a joyful or purposeful activity on the weekend when you’re not working—and I’m talking about something that takes 30 minutes or an hour. You like taking a long walk with your wife? Great. You like bicycle riding? You join a club that meets once a week for an hour. If you do that consistently, even if you don’t change anything about work, you’re adding in some joy and purpose in your life, you’re making some connections in community, and that’s going to help with burnout a little bit.
But then you can use the art of subtraction. This goes back to your workplace environment. Do a mental calculation, write out all your roles and responsibilities, cross out everything you loathe. Is there anything you love? When I was burning out, I happened to be financially independent, so that allowed me to leave most of medicine. But if I couldn’t leave medicine, I certainly could have brought more hospice work into my life and gotten rid of more of my clinical life and the other things I didn’t like. So maybe I increase my hospice work to part time or 50 percent, and then I do the clinic 50 percent. So what I’m doing there is using the art of subtraction to define something about work that I do like, that feels purposeful, and then I’m increasing the amount of doing that and decreasing the amount of doing other things. There are tons of examples. When I realized I loved writing, I started writing blog posts, and I found a company that paid me 500 for each blog post, and so there I was building some revenue that would have allowed me to decrease my time as a practicing physician if I wanted to.
And last but not least, there’s substitution. If you’re burning out at work, and you’re like, I can’t add in any joyful activities and I can’t subtract anything, maybe you can change jobs. Maybe you can change employers. Maybe you can change shifts. All these things are little changes in which you can relieve some of your stress and anxiety. It is not perfect, and it is an incremental process, but the point is you want to add in as much joy as possible, get rid of as many things you loathe as possible, and yet still be able to make a living and support your family. And that’s kind of the goal that we all have—to make those numbers better over time.
Kevin Pho: Now, how did you yourself come up with this framework and these definitions? Did you have any influences or outside sources that kind of inspired you to come up with this?
Jordan Grumet: I think it was a mix of a number of things. Being a hospice doctor, I spent a lot of time at the bedside talking to people who were dying and talking to them about their regrets. And because none of them ever mentioned money and none of them ever mentioned their jobs or getting promotions, a lot of time I realized immediately we’re doing this wrong. But on top of that, I also spent hundreds and hundreds of hours interviewing financial experts and seeing what they did right and did wrong. Eventually, I started a mastermind and began doing purpose coaching. And so all of that, along with writing my first book, kind of built a framework of what it looks like to win the game.
Pretty much, winning the game is realizing that we have no control over time. You’ve been given a set amount of time in life. We don’t know how much that’s going to be, because we don’t know how long we’re going to live. Time passes no matter what you do—you can’t buy it, you can’t sell it, you can’t trade it. All you can do is try to control the activities that you fill that time with. And so winning the game is doing as many things as you love as possible in that time, and doing as few things as possible that you loathe. From the day we’re 20-something years old and enter the workplace until the day we die, we want to continuously be looking at our calendar and increasing the things we love and decreasing the things we loathe. The only way to do that is to use some of those tools to bring in more purposeful activity and get rid of the things you don’t like.
But we have to be mindful that there’s a financial framework. And that’s why I think being a hospice doctor and a personal finance expert kind of lines me up to talk about purpose, because you need both. You need that understanding that you could die, and there are these things that are important in your life and you want to pursue them, but then you also have to be savvy enough to figure out your finances to support you in that journey. So I think that’s why it aligned me to build this framework. To answer your question, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen someone who has a similar framework. I don’t remember ever reading someone and saying, aha, this is something I’m going to build on. It was more that lived experience of dealing with people in these various situations.
Kevin Pho: So talk about your purpose coaching. What kind of clients come to you for a purpose coach? Do you have a lot of physicians coming to you, for instance? Are they high achievers? Tell me about your clientele who comes to you for purpose coaching.
Jordan Grumet: So my clientele tends to be people who are mid-career, who have started figuring out the money piece and realize that that didn’t solve all their problems. A lot of physicians, a lot of professionals—most of them have moderate to high wealth, and they’ve had enough success in their life to start thinking about purpose and realizing that they are not fulfilled by their lives. Maybe they’re stuck in the midst of burnout. Maybe they’re like, I have enough money to do something different with my life, but I’m definitely afraid of leaving this career—it’s the only way I’ve ever identified myself. And so I spend about half of my time talking about meaning and the other half talking about purpose. Most people think they have a purpose problem—and let me explain the difference.
Purpose is about the present and future, and it’s about actions; it’s doing things that light you up. A good deal of people, actually, when you really ask them, totally know what lights them up. They’re like, oh, I used to love skiing, and I love pickleball, and I love writing, and they have all these things they love, and they think they have a purpose problem. But actually, they have purpose—tons of purposeful activities in their life.
A lot of people have what’s called a meaning problem. Meaning is about our past, and it’s about our thoughts. So purpose is about our present and future, and it’s about actions. Meaning is about our past, and it’s about our thoughts—and this is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. Happy people tend to tell themselves heroic stories, where they had lots of difficulties and trauma when they were younger, but they got past it because they were enough as human beings. So they come to the present and future feeling enough—they don’t feel like they have to prove themselves, they already did that. Those people very joyfully jump into purpose, because it’s just finding activities they love.
People who are unhappy tend to have a sense of meaning that, instead of telling themselves a heroic story, they tend to tell themselves a victim story. So they feel like their traumas and the difficulties during early childhood or young adulthood thwarted them, and they feel like they were never enough to get past that victimhood. So they tend to not feel like they’re enough in the present and future, and a lot of those people try to pursue purpose to feel like they’re enough, and it just doesn’t work really well. You can’t purpose your way to enough. We know tons of really, really successful people who are still on that achievement treadmill, still trying to achieve more and more because they don’t understand any concept of enough. Elon Musk is a great example of that, right? He doesn’t look particularly happy, but he’s achieved pretty much at the height of human possibility. A lot of those people have a meaning problem, and I have to go back to their past and better understand their traumas and realize that they were always enough, that they weren’t a victim, and that they were more of a hero. I think that’s what I spend a lot of time doing—about half the people really have more of a meaning problem, and we’re talking about their past. The other half have a purpose issue, and they just need help building some of those activities.
Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Jordan Grumet. He’s an internal medicine physician, and we’re talking about his new book, The Purpose Code: How to unlock meaning, maximize happiness, and leave a lasting legacy. Jordan, as always, let’s end with some take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience.
Jordan Grumet: Purpose is abundant. Everyone is afraid of it. They think it’s ephemeral. They think it’s untouchable. I’m here to tell you that it is abundant, and it is easy. Most people just need a little help in learning how to pursue purpose; it is very straightforward. The idea behind writing this book is I wanted it to be a step-by-step guide about how you can pursue purpose in a very joyful manner. Don’t get distracted by this idea that purpose is something complicated—it is not true.
Kevin Pho: Jordan, thank you so much for sharing your perspective and insight. Wonderful talking to you again.
Jordan Grumet: As always, thank you for having me.
